I would like to eliminate my cat. I have seen people in here talking about eliminating the cat and would like to know how they did it. I have an 03 sunfire 5speed with an intake and catback from magnaflow. I will be adding a header soon. I have a hihgflow cat on hand from magnaflow and it cost me 200 from rk. To make a long story short I want to use the money elsewhere and just knock out the cat. Can and how can it be done

Quick question: Is this strictly a track car? Because you will not pass emissions without a cat. It is the primary emissions control device in the exhaust. You will have to deal with relocating and fooling the secondary O2 sensor, but other than that, it's just a matter of cutting. Sawz-All the cat off, and weld a straight pipe in it's place. Piece o' cake. <br>







"The absolute MOST IMPORTANT PART of a car is located between the driver's ears."
- Anonymous

The emissions is only visual here. So I just wanted to knock out the cat. Where do I put the o2 sensor at? Thanks for an answer. I have been asking this on the main site for a few days now and everyone will not answer me straight. They are more concerned with other aspects like the high flow cat I have. Oi.... I cant wait to get rid of that restriction and I know the car will perform better.
Thanks

Well, don't go jumping to conclusions so quickly. You may need to do some extra work as a result.....
I don't care WHAT people say, a car's ECU is definetly programmed for very specific settings. I started screwing around with the backpressure of my exhaust system on my 04 Ion, and royally screwed up the ignition cassette. Fried it. And the ECU was cooked. I ended up conspiring with the techs at Saturn (in dark corners, heh heh heh) and recalibrated my ECU to something a little bit more like a Redline's settings. THEN we had a SERIOUS increase in power. It may take some trial and error.
Whereas a muffler contributes most (I think) backpressure to the system, a cat adds a lot too.
Yeah, a high flow cat is kind of a compromise. It's great for the kiddies who just want to bolt on something, and not have to use math (uh, duh?) to really tune their cars. You can do ANYTHING to your car, as long as it's settings are retuned to expect it.
What kinda car you runnin?

<br>







"The absolute MOST IMPORTANT PART of a car is located between the driver's ears."
- Anonymous

ONLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HAVING A CAT IF YOU ARE NOT GETTING YOUR INSPECTION STICKER FROM SOMEONE YOU KNOW!! RK SELLS A 02 ELIMINATOR FOR THE J-BODY SO CUT AND WELD AWAY.

Thanks Mike however what you speak of does not apply to the eco engine to the best of my knowledge. I have an 03 sunfire 5 speed Derryck.

I would like to do this so if anyone can let me know how where to relocate the o2 someone has a sim that requires relocation

If anyone has more detailed information(o2 location) I would appreciate it.

Just to eliminate some confusion I just got off the phone from rk sport and they have nothing for the ecotec and the sims they get are supplied by casper who I spoke with earlier this week and they(casper) said they were working on it but nothing yet and could not give me any kind of time frame for release.

Derryck Thomas wrote:I ended up conspiring with the techs at Saturn (in dark corners, heh heh heh) and recalibrated my ECU to something a little bit more like a Redline's settings. THEN we had a SERIOUS increase in power. It may take some trial and error.

Exactly how did you go about doing this, cuz from what I hear the Saturn PCM cannot be cracked/reprogrammed. If this is different with the Ion please let me know as I have a good friend workin in the service dept at a pontiac dealership with access to all the OBD-II tools.

When I fried the PCM, (how, the techs don't know, hell I don't even know!) I remember talking with a buddy who works in the dept. I discussed with him some of the EFI and engine managment books I had been reading. He agreed that part of the problem might have been that I had not accounted for the PCM not liking some of the new readings it was getting.
Now, my knowledge in this exact area is VERY amatuer. When I got the car back, I simply took it out, and asked no questions. I decided to put the car through it's "paces", to make sure they had fixed all the problems. Uh, yeah.
I had never felt the car accelerate that fast. It was ludacris speed, with out a space ship. (If you get that joke, let me know).
I called up service next day. They said that because of the changes I had made with tuning the intake, and freeing the exhaust, decreasing resistance, etc....., that the sensor outputs were more in line with a Redline. Therefore, they had changed some of the settings. Now, whether they had reprogrammed a stock PCM, or had retrofitted a Redline PCM, I do not profess to know. However, this IS what Saturn told me.
It's been 4-5 months now, and the Ion still goes insanely fast. I tested it with a g-tech pro accelerometer, and after some math and averaging, I came up with and average flywheel HP of 178. (This is estimated, using averages and means.) This was done recently, with winter tires on. (Which sucks. Rated for 90 MPH only, I hate winter. Vermont sucks.) <br>







"The absolute MOST IMPORTANT PART of a car is located between the driver's ears."
- Anonymous

Derryck Thomas wrote:When I fried the PCM, (how, the techs don't know, hell I don't even know!) I remember talking with a buddy who works in the dept. I discussed with him some of the EFI and engine managment books I had been reading. He agreed that part of the problem might have been that I had not accounted for the PCM not liking some of the new readings it was getting.
Now, my knowledge in this exact area is VERY amatuer. When I got the car back, I simply took it out, and asked no questions. I decided to put the car through it's "paces", to make sure they had fixed all the problems. Uh, yeah.
I had never felt the car accelerate that fast. It was ludacris speed, with out a space ship. (If you get that joke, let me know).
I called up service next day. They said that because of the changes I had made with tuning the intake, and freeing the exhaust, decreasing resistance, etc....., that the sensor outputs were more in line with a Redline. Therefore, they had changed some of the settings. Now, whether they had reprogrammed a stock PCM, or had retrofitted a Redline PCM, I do not profess to know. However, this IS what Saturn told me.
It's been 4-5 months now, and the Ion still goes insanely fast. I tested it with a g-tech pro accelerometer, and after some math and averaging, I came up with and average flywheel HP of 178. (This is estimated, using averages and means.) This was done recently, with winter tires on. (Which sucks. Rated for 90 MPH only, I hate winter. Vermont sucks.)

g-tech innaccurate............
no cat on my car the car runs better with out the cat than it ever has <br>

its a cavalier i should get 2 cars and the hit

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

two things:

1:

IonJon04 wrote:

Derryck Thomas wrote:I ended up conspiring with the techs at Saturn (in dark corners, heh heh heh) and recalibrated my ECU to something a little bit more like a Redline's settings. THEN we had a SERIOUS increase in power. It may take some trial and error.

Exactly how did you go about doing this, cuz from what I hear the Saturn PCM cannot be cracked/reprogrammed. If this is different with the Ion please let me know as I have a good friend workin in the service dept at a pontiac dealership with access to all the OBD-II tools.

i thought the ions use the CAN system instead of OBD2?


2:
"MICHAEL MARTINSON" dude, turn off your caps lock key. do you have any idea how annoying that is?

sorry about that daniel i hope this is better

Hey Michael how is your car doing without the cat?
I really hope that you do well without it so I can have some justification for removing mine. Also I heard that just because the check engine light does not come on does not mean it's not throwing codes. Do you have access to an obd2 scanner?
Let me know how things turn out

Hey man, Yeah no codes yet, thanks for that info. I have had mine off for about 5 days...so, so far so good. I will keep you updated.

i took my cat off and put on a custom 3" exhaust. of course the check engine light came on and stayed on. for some reason once i took it off my a/f gauge always reads lean, to the extreme left side of the gauge.

i posted this in the other forum but anyhow here goes. i had already ordered the 02 sim from rk sport before cheesecake said it wouldn't work and instead of sending it back i just put the damn thing on my car. i have to drive 120 miles this evening so i figured it would be a pretty good test for it....so i will let you know what happens this evening.

i didn't make it 30 miles and the cel came back on, oh well guess it's back to the drawing board. that sucks!

Derryck Thomas wrote:. It was ludacris speed, with out a space ship. (If you get that joke, let me know).

Spaceballs <br>


Among the winners, there is no room for the weak

you can do it but it is against federal law to also depending where you live you will never pass emissions.Plus with the o2 sensors you will set off your check engine light and most likely you will loose power it is there for a reason

I guess I will have to do as cheesecake did and use the magnaflow cat. I am really getting annoyed with people not developing for these cars.


LIVIN IN THE STIX

the )2 sim i bought from rk does not work on the ecotec.




ECOTEC DECALS NOW FOR SELL. EMAIL ME.

You will not lose power from the cat eliminated, check the post "dyno numbers" those were put down with a mil light on because of the hollow cat.


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Ben Brown wrote:You will not lose power from the cat eliminated, check the post "dyno numbers" those were put down with a mil light on because of the hollow cat.

Hi Ben,

This is really only true for naturally aspirated cars. For example, Saabs dynoed WITH a cat actually produced 3-5 more HP than those dynoed without.

From www.mpperformance.com

WITH CAT:




WITHOUT CAT:

Hmm thats odd, ive always been told that you want the least amount of backpressure after a turbo as possible, and want some resistance on a N/A car.


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