This is a great discussion about cats and the subjects surrounding them, I see a lot of guys voting but really voice your opinion. I wanna see the best and brightest of I-club and what they have to say !

WRX Rush
Austin

 

I'll have to delete my post then..... if you want the best and brightest of I-club!

 

the question garners a relative answer. people have different tolerance levels for smoke. some of us can walk behind a smoker all day long and not mind, but others (such as myself) can and will get headaches from inhaling smoke. so right there, you have a health concern even if it doesn't affect us to the same degree as say cancer.

then there's teh fact that we smell like crap (no offense to you; it's just that i loath cigarette smoke) after being around smokers. you can go as far as to say that this is an infringement on my "bodily rights" because you are intruding on my "pheromonal bubble." to me, it's almost equivalent to getting bad breath because the guy standing next to me on BART has bad breath...you get my drift. your lifestyle & habit should not affect me.

back to the catless issue...i'm sure that wrx's are not the worst polluters compared to larger vehicles, but i believe that we should all do what we can. on the same token, you can say that recycling isn't worth our time at the individual level b/c X corporation doesn't recycle car sheet metal and Y corporation does not reuse their paper goods. it's the spirit of the law by which we should abide to. running catless is in clear violation of the law as well as our sense of accountibility to the environment as well as to each other.

i'm sure we can also go into social justice and moral obligations too....

db

 

This is a interesting debate. On one hand, you don't want to destroy the air that we breath by eliminating cats in general. You can see the effects of that in India and some of the other countries. Many people in India have respitory problems that are a direct cause of the pollution. But on the other hand, for all of us speed junkies, eliminating cats and dropping us time in the quarter mile is what we are looking for. This is my opinion. No matter what, we need to have cats. I personally don't want my children to have respitory problems simply because we were tired of smoging our cars. But, we are still going to continue to break these laws for that hp gain. You can compare it to speeding. We need to have laws that regulate speed because there are a lot of morons out there that cannot drive. But we will continue to speed. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but thats my opinion.

On a side note, the new cars that are being put out don't really pollute that much. Its the cars from our past that do most of the damage. If you get a non boosted car that is brand new, and you don't have cats on it, it will still probably pass smog. My friend did it at his shop with a car that they had. When cars run properly, they will pass smog. Also, someone mentioned above about the diesel trucks with all their black smoke. Diesels run much cleaner than cars. Even though we can't see the exhaust coming out of the tail pipe, the trucks run cleaner.

 

single, hi flow cat would be just fine... That's my plan.

 

CO2 is a naturally-occuring gas that isn't outrageously dangerous. N20, sulfur dioxide and unburnt hydrocarbons ARE, both in creating low-level ozone and in destroying delicate upper-atmosphere conditions and creating acid rain. You are not "trading" one thing for another; you are converting the dangerous compounds into more benign ones. It is not a simple "trade" by any means; the Co2 is not equivalently damaging as the uncatalyzed exhaust, and is certainly safer than the infinitely more destructive carbon monoxide (CO) that would be released by a catless car.

 

not to mention all the HPD guys. i i have 3 friends in HPD running full on catless with a 02 SS. i know of one cop that runs straight pipes.

i'm still new to turbos and all that emcompass them... but i wonder if running a straight pipe for turbos is best? (<---- may not be best and brightest of i-club )




aloha from the summit of Mauna Kea

 

You're lucky that you live in Rhode Island! There is no chance in hell that you would pass in California with that setup.

 

i have no cats on my car and enjoy it but los angeles is getting really smoggy these days. used to be able to almost see the ocean coming down on the 2 freeway but now its too smoggy even on a clear day.

 

Good and bad stories but in CA any major cats gone is a huge red flag. I have another question for everyone . . .

What do you think about High Flow Cat-Downpipes. Helix, ASP,PDE make them. Some people think they are to make you feel better and less damaging because all they are, are a little beer can welded to a what would be cool downpipe. Since you see almost no loss in flow, do you think they work ? Are they worth the cash that you shell out ?

WRX Rush
Austin

 

Hi-flow cats are good for visual, but they more than likely will not pass smog. My friend had a hi-flow cat on his car, failed smog miserably. He switched back to his stock cats and passed. I bet you they pollute almost as much as running w/o cats. I wouldn't waste my money on them. Thats just my opinion.

 

LA area smog used to be bad.

Some consider it bad today...but the smog we have now is nothing.

When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, you'd have to come in the house on summer days because your lungs literally hurt from inhaling polluted air, not to mention stinging eyes (no BS). Back then, the emmissions from a car when it was running were like the emmissions from a contemporary car at startup. It was that bad. The clean-air laws that were inacted have improved the air quality greatly. Make no mistake.

I, for one, would not like to see the return of the those days, at least with respect to air pollution (pre HIV/AIDS, boy bands, mariah carey, osama bin laden, etc. was all good though). I've witnessed, first hand, the improvement over the last 30 years and it has been pretty drastic. Sure the air still looks like crap but its the child molesters and PS2s that are keepin the kids inside these days not the 3rd degree smog alerts.

Try to go at least 1 cat. You're not gonna get richer or laid more or finally show those bastards who laughed at you 'til you cried who's boss because your car has +10HP.

That said...my AP is arriving on tues!!!!! Stage II, here I come!!! (yes, I did get the high-flow cat and yes, i still have one in the up).