The grey area of the law
 

I was recently informed that it is in fact against federal law to remove your catalatic converter but what about a non highway off-road only truck??? or does this law cover all vehicles in all instances??? Any opinions or information is appreciated as for me and my LIL JIMMY im gonna replace the bad one with the cheapest one out there since they aparently dont robb much power like the older ones did. Hell I might even get one of them fancy high flow ones ...

from what i understand if your vehicle came with one then it has to have one.

my 95 stang had 4 cats on it...all very small (2 were prob pre cats). so i replaced them with two updated high flow 2.5" cats...one for each side of the dual pipes i fabbed up....sound good to me and when you look thru them you can clearly see out the other end.

i would just get a new one of your choice and be done with it. honestly by the time your done monkeying around trying to figure out a way to get around the cat you could have a decent one on there and no system issues like check lights and such.

Its illegal to not have cats? even in states that do not require emission checks? hmm, learn something new every day I guess.
So if i were to bring my jimmy to an exhaust shop to get the exhaust done, they would have to put a cat on? since it does not have one now.

thats what the administrator told me when he closed my thread on removing mine you can check it out its CAT DELETE PROS VS CONS

That is something I never knew, That is why i love this site, Learn something new every day, Very interesting bit of info.

My state doesn't have inspections. So a lot of vehicles around here don't have the cats. My truck is a thieft recovery vehicle. The cat was cut off when stolen. I never put on back on. I just ran duals dumping before rear tires and called it good enough. Loud in the truck. Will have too redo with quality mufflers. The cheap ones or too loud for me anymore

Off-road only vehicles that never touch DOT roads, are not registered, etc do not have to comply with EPA regulations to a certain point.

Even if your state does not have inspections, tailpipe emissions checks, etc, it is still against federal law to remove emissions equipment from your vehicle. That is besides the point that most of the emissions equipment on modern vehicles doesn't really hinder performance as much as doubters make it out to. A universal high-flow catalytic converter is cheap and outperforms the stock converter in terms of flow and tailpipe emissions.

As far as a vehicle being a theft recovery... A universal catalytic converter is only $50 plus another $50 max to have it put on. Be responsible. Besides, dumping ahead of the rear axle is likely illegal in your area anyway given the configuration of your truck. Most locales have a requirement that the exhaust must exit behind the passenger compartment or out the side behind the rear axle. On an SUV, the passenger compartment extends all the way to the back hatch. There is real safety concern behind this requirement though. Exhaust gasses can be reintroduced to the passenger compartment with exhaust that exits under the vehicle. Just something to be mindful of.

Do stupid things with your truck and expect to be slapped with fines. I think that goes without saying.

years ago i needed new exhaust donuts put a k5 blazer i had, i dropped it of to have the work done, they called me up like a hour ago and said to come get it, they cant work on it due to having no cats on it.

yup here in canada you can be fined up to and over $10,000 for messin with emissions systems and they do road side inspections every once in awhile and they usually get one or 2 cars that dont comply

Funny story my brother was having the same issue with his cat that I was. The rattle inside like I was falling apart inside. He took it to a shop to have it fixed along with some other minor things and when he picked it up we went for a ride to see how it drove. The exhaust note was a lot deeper sounding I noticed and when I got under to check out the new "muffler" they installed. Witch is what they said was wrong with it all they did was removed his cat and put a price off pipe to his old muffler and charged him 240$ needless to say he was pissed and told them he will not pay for any of the work.

Boy that was a long ass wait to figure out they won't work on something.

Was that Rumplestiltskins garage by any chance?

Hahah

lol. 2 years and i finally got my truck back :icon_toast::icon_toast::icon_toast::icon_toast:




(meant 1 hr later of course :) )

Removing emission equipment is not only illegal under Federal Law it also in most cases hurts performance & fuel mileage. These computer vehicles are set up to run in certain parameters. Those include the smog equipment. If your not an Engineer that has experience with vehicles then the chances you are going to improve much by removing equipment from a computer vehicle is slim to non.
I have worked the pits for a top Pro truck team. In one race sitting in the next pit was a team of GM engineers with special computers & equipment to not only test but to help improve performance by reprogramming the on board computers.

The problem is new tech takes awhile to trickle down to the shade tree guy. People are afraid to learn new ways or give up on the old ones. Why you see so many carbs hacked into trucks that it would have been just as easy to keep the factory tbi on.

When cats and things like variable timing came out they did suck. It was an improvement to remove it. Companies were being forced to put the stuff on there by the governbomb and the tech wasn't ready at the time. People have it stuck in their head since they removed the cat from their 76 nova ss it picked up 20 hp the same must be true on the 2011 truck. That fancy tbi doesn't have 20 screws on the side to play with there is nothing that can be done to it. Rip it off to put a carb on it so they have something to tinker with and claim they are doing so much better when bench racing.