A drain hole in the cat?
 

Hey guys, I'm fooling around trying to track down an exhaust leak or two on my 86 GXL. I've taken care of one just after the first pre-cat, but in my main cat there's hot exhaust gas coming out from what appears to be a drain hole in the heat shield.

One fellow I talked with seems to think that it's a drain for water from the catalytic converter, so some hot gasses are going to come out there as a result. But I'm not so sure that's right. I don't want to fail inspection because of it (if it's supposed to be there, I assume that it will pass inspection with it).

I can't see the cat itself, just the heat shield around it.. and getting past the heat shield would pretty much require cutting it off, which I'm not eager to do (elevated risk of setting dry grass/leaves on fire, etc.).. so I thought I'd see if someone here could say definitively one way or another before I break out the cutting tools.

So, in summary, is there a water drain hole (that exhaust gas can come out of) in the main cat?

Thanks in advance.

Ok.. no help on that one, I guess...

Anybody got any better ideas than cutting to be able to look past that heat shield? Is there a trick I don't know about to get it done?

Thanks..

There is no drain hole from thr cat itself.

If it has naturally rusted away behind the heat sheild then thatnk the rotary gods.
Holes == exhaust being diverted away from the tail pipe where they have the sniffer.
Which means you get a cleaner test since some is being snuck away.

If they can't directly see the hole then you should be fine.

Well, I ended up failing for an exhaust leak..

Thanks for the info on the cat, though.. I am searching now for info on replacement cats, and may post a separate thread about it soon..