this came out of my exhaust and im assuming its my cats guts. am i right?

 

Yup. Awesome!

 

Get a few more of those pieces out of it and you'll have a high flow cat!

 

That thing must be really clogged. Replace or remove is ASAP, because it won't be doing your engine's performance any favours.

 

someones not going to pass there emishions

 

Does Ohio have emishions? Thank God Georgia doesn't.

 

ohio does but florida doesnt, where my car is registered:-)

the whole story is this morning i adjusted the push rod on the brake booster and decided to go test it out. after about half an hour of REALLY hard driving i noticed the temps were at 3/4 the way up instead of the normal 1/2 so i drove home. after parking in the garage i popped the hood and decided to check all my fluids and spark plugs (which leads to another question in a minute). after i was done i got in my car and started it. it started and then just basically died. i was like wtf? so i checked that i didnt put the spark plug wires on leading on trailing, which i didnt. so i started it again and it started went down to idle, idled like **** for a sec then died again... so i tried it a few more times with the same results. then i checked to see if i had blown anything out of the exhaust and sure enough i found that little sucker with some smaller pieces. at first i thought it was a piece of massonry work from the cieling or something, then i smelled it and no mistaking it, its from the exhaust. my car must be telling me it wants a downpipe and presilencer for x-mas...


and i also have a question about spark plugs. are the trailing supposed to be fauled on one half and burnt looking on another? and the leading were light brownish burnt all over and smelled like burn electronics. is that normal? how do you know when to replace them? i replaced mine not too long ago but thought looking at them couldnt hurt.

 

nice

 

Hmm...Arent you not supposed to smell that? I heard that it can do some serious damage to the lungs if inhaled....

 

Sounds like you are going to need a new engine soon....

 

haha, i think youre right. punching cats is kinda bad. the inner 'comb' of the cat goes everywhere. i dont know what all makes up catalytic converters, but its enough to split elements apart (Oxygen molecules) and reinsert the oxygen onto the other elements (wowsa! a catalyst!). mmmm, catalytic converter....

 

....? no, a new cat. or a pipe in place of the cat.

 

hey, i think it smells pretty good! i actually like the smell of it... it smells like exhaust! and yeah, i plan on getting a down pipe and presilencer. i think this was my cars way of hinting that it wanted it for x-mas.

 

Man. Thats interesting. The only thing my car spits out is smoke when its cold... nice kill.

 

Nice. My first precat blew all its guts into my 2nd precat and started making that all wierd :p

 

some older cats used to be lined with platinum but i don't know if they have changed the chemical makeup of them now or not. it will not hurt your lungs to smell the core, it is not made of asbestos...

you should remove the exhaust and punch out the remaning bits of core material from the cats because it will or has already plugged up your mufflers, which may not be easy to clean out if at all possible.

the reason your engine starts then dies is because the exhaust is acting like an empty balloon, once the engine starts and fills the chamber down to the restriction the flow backs up and becomes pressurized forcing pressure back into the engine usually causing a backfire as the engine dies in a piston engine but i don't think rotaries will backfire because there is no valve overlap. so either clean it out or don't drive the car is my suggestion.

 

whats a cat

 

sometimes i wish i didn't live in california...

 

Certain counties in OH require emissions testing, most do not. I am also one of the lucky bastards in PA who is not required to get emissions testing done. Yay! As most others have said, either replace it with a high flow unit, or punch it out hollow.

 

cats are mostly platinum oxide i believe. all it does is create extreme heat by breaking down hydrocarbons. the molecules generated afterwards are low energy, mostly harmless stuff like co2

 

a 3 way cat has two "honeycombs" inside (there's other cat designs, but ours are 3 way); first one (oxidation reduction) removes the O, second (oxidation) reattaches it. this is why the air pipe is attached to the middle. it feeds in oxygen to the second honeycomb since it was just removed from the emissions.

not according to my emissions test.

 

lol, only on the rx7club.com forum:
"this chunk of **** just shot out of my exhaust"
->"AWW, THAT KICKS ***!"

 

me want honey comb

 

well the single muffler that i have on there is a straight threw one and it didnt have anything sitting in it. and the way i got it unclogged a bit more was to turn it on and before it died i reved the **** out of it. after about the 3rd rev i got a few nice loud pops and it idled fine again. but im still ganna get the dp and presilencer.

and are presilencers free flowing enough to get flames? just wondering!

 

Presilencers are straight through with a "honeycomb" type surface around the other edge of the tubing. they will very much allow flames to creep their way through :-)----very poor explination perhaps but that is what the RB presilencer is like.
-on a side note- this morning while letting my car warm up and while i was having a cigarette behind my car it randomly backfired-i have a bad fuel injector so this happens once in a while- and the flame missed me by about 2 feet. a little scary perhaps but i got a mega kick out of it
Matt