With my turbo destruction, I've got a secondary problem to deal with:
The turbo dumped tons of coolant and oil into the downpipe and cat. This probably has destroyed the cat.

So I'm looking at my downpipe and thinking. Rather than dumping another $550 on an otherwise perfect downpipe; could I just cut the cat off and weld in a new metallic substrate cat in its place.

From the pic it looks totally doable. As long as the measurements match up this seems easy. Vibrant 200 cell cats are ~ $100.
Anyone tried this?

 

Muffler shop could say better than I could. Offhand it seems like something they could do, but... may have to do some hand waving about for off road use only though, and you also might have issues getting a universal cat in CA (I don't even think you can ship them into the state?), ie: you'd have to get a vehicle-specific, essentially midpipe location, weld-on cat of appropriate size.

Again, check with a shop about what's possible practically, legally, and otherwise. Good luck.

 

It's starting to look like getting a replacement cat shipped to CA will be a problem (goddammit )
I wonder if CARB realizes by making it difficult to get parts, it makes it that much more likely for people to just run full on catless/dirty

 

They even made it hard to get an OEM catted downpipe, and then there are issues with places re-welding a cat into an existing one too. Unfortunately, picking up another downpipe is probably your best bet still.