toothpicsk8

i thikn i have a problem with my exhaust i boght the car with it , the previosue engine leaked coolant into the stock exhaust so they put a new cat in and then finally put a new cat back on , now it only has one cat and my moms bf went to napa and the guy at nappa said there is 3 on the stock exhaust . and ive been haveing really bad problems with my car runnign and i think its the cat cuz when i start the car and let it idle till warm its fine runs like new, then when i take it for a ride , it all of aa sudden looses most of the power an dit idles real low, and ive made several posts about it and i still cant find the problem, but its a possibility its the cat and i wanna know if i eliminated the cat all together if i had to plug up the lil thing that goes to the cat from the engine, and if it would be ok by doing that , i dont care abotu emissions as of right now just wanna see if the car runs sufficiantly ( and i wanna see what it sounds like with no cat hehehe)thanks, and if u have any suggestins on possible things wrong tell me

ps havent done compression test but as i said it runs fine idleing and for a lil while when driving it it has alot of power( 87 n/a 120000 miles)

casio

man, punctuation would have made reading that a LOT easier...
you dont need cats for it to run right. stock, there's a main cat and 2 precats. they arent needed to run right, though. the tube to the cat is for emissions. since your car is an 87, it uses the exhaust pressure to open its auxliary ports. running no cats wont cause the symptoms you've described.
summary: dont worry about the precats. i cant even imagine what mazda charges for them anyways.

7th Heaven

maybe your cat is clogged?

toothpicsk8

clogged cat is why i took the one off in the first place, so if i take the cat off and put a strait pipe do i have to hook that emissions pipe up because it opens somethign??

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1RevvinFC3S

Not trying to hijack this thread, but would gutting a the cat have a -/+ effect on horsepower/ torque and life of the smog pump?

casio

i personally dont believe in gutting cats. i think a "test pipe" (whatever you wanna call it) should be used instead. both positive and negative effects (both hp and tq) may occur.
smog pump should not be affected. hell, without a cat, no smog pump needs to be on the car.

and the first two cats are also known as "thermal reactors." they were supposed to assist with burning the HCs, but i dont know how they work as opposed to how a cat works.

rs_1101

id imagine that a thermal reactor would burn hydrocarbons by increasing heat in the exhaust tunnel, which would also increase exhaust heat to make catalytic converters (which speed up the process of exhaust breakdown by catalyst) work