This came up in another thread, but may be worth breaking out seperatly.
In one of the SRT Engineer chat sessions it was implied (I'm sure they can't come out legally and say it) that the cats were one of the biggest areas of restriction in the exhaust for our cars. I don't know how many people took that and immediately dumped their cats for 'test pipes' expecting a big gain, but I have seen that a lot of folks are running cat-less.
I think most of us would agree it's a given that emissions rules will tighten up over the next couple of years (ex: Vehicle Emission Rules to Tighten - washingtonpost.com), and more and more areas will start implementing the same kind of testing CA uses now. That means that test pipes are pretty much out if you want to drive your car on the street in the future. So the alternative (which is only semi-legal in most cases) would logically be higher-flowing cats, right?
I looked around last night, and while lots of places offer 'high-flow" or "high-performance" cats, real information on these is kind of thin on the ground. Very few vendors offered any documentation on improved flow rates or HP/TQ gains. After reading this article in an import web site (Catalytic Converters - Stock vs. Aftermarket Cats - Import Tuner Magazine) I can see why, since the gains they found on the dyno were so small they could be dyno error margin as easily as any real change.
Another article from a vendor of high-flow units (here: Technical) goes into a detailed explanation of cats in general, and what makes a high-flow unit 'better'. It's a good read, but doesn't really address whether high-flow cats will really give an improvement or not.
Last time I had my car up hight enough, I was looking over the exhaust, and to tell the truth, I was really pretty impressed with how everything looked under there. The cats were small 'bullet' units, not the big suitcases I was thinking they were, and the mufflers were straight through and tiny (6-speed car obviously). Even that much-maligned rear resonator wasn't as big as I thought it would be.
On the other thread it was mentioned that the SRTs already had 'high-flow' cats from the factory, and while I'm sure they are different parts from the RT cats because of the pipe diameter, the overall shape and size looks similar. I know that doesn't mean anything per-se, since after reading the article above it's obvious that most cat improvements (for both performance and emissions) are invisible, but I still can't help thinking that these units still flow pretty well.
The reason there's a question mark at the end of this thread title is this. Has anyone (vendors included) done a comparison of flow, HP/TQ, or both on our cars stock cats versus high-flow units and/or test pipes? If so, please chime in here, I'm sure I'm not the only one curious about this...
In one of the SRT Engineer chat sessions it was implied (I'm sure they can't come out legally and say it) that the cats were one of the biggest areas of restriction in the exhaust for our cars. I don't know how many people took that and immediately dumped their cats for 'test pipes' expecting a big gain, but I have seen that a lot of folks are running cat-less.
I think most of us would agree it's a given that emissions rules will tighten up over the next couple of years (ex: Vehicle Emission Rules to Tighten - washingtonpost.com), and more and more areas will start implementing the same kind of testing CA uses now. That means that test pipes are pretty much out if you want to drive your car on the street in the future. So the alternative (which is only semi-legal in most cases) would logically be higher-flowing cats, right?
I looked around last night, and while lots of places offer 'high-flow" or "high-performance" cats, real information on these is kind of thin on the ground. Very few vendors offered any documentation on improved flow rates or HP/TQ gains. After reading this article in an import web site (Catalytic Converters - Stock vs. Aftermarket Cats - Import Tuner Magazine) I can see why, since the gains they found on the dyno were so small they could be dyno error margin as easily as any real change.
Another article from a vendor of high-flow units (here: Technical) goes into a detailed explanation of cats in general, and what makes a high-flow unit 'better'. It's a good read, but doesn't really address whether high-flow cats will really give an improvement or not.
Last time I had my car up hight enough, I was looking over the exhaust, and to tell the truth, I was really pretty impressed with how everything looked under there. The cats were small 'bullet' units, not the big suitcases I was thinking they were, and the mufflers were straight through and tiny (6-speed car obviously). Even that much-maligned rear resonator wasn't as big as I thought it would be.
On the other thread it was mentioned that the SRTs already had 'high-flow' cats from the factory, and while I'm sure they are different parts from the RT cats because of the pipe diameter, the overall shape and size looks similar. I know that doesn't mean anything per-se, since after reading the article above it's obvious that most cat improvements (for both performance and emissions) are invisible, but I still can't help thinking that these units still flow pretty well.
The reason there's a question mark at the end of this thread title is this. Has anyone (vendors included) done a comparison of flow, HP/TQ, or both on our cars stock cats versus high-flow units and/or test pipes? If so, please chime in here, I'm sure I'm not the only one curious about this...