Ive have tried a search and struggled to find anything but again if the question has been answered else where give me a PM and I will get get the thread removed.

Anyway, ive tried looking for pictures of UK catalytic converters on rx-8's and I have struggled to find any with the correct angle to determine if the cat is a straight through design or an offset one. Ideally what I would like to experiment with is hollowing out a cat and welding a pipe straight through (basically making a de-cat through the original housing) this would mean any visual inpsections of the car for any reason would indicate the cat is still there and it would also remove the risk of destorying a good (and expensive) converter if plugs or coils fail. The original item would be kept for emmisions testing as required once a year.

Also do cats get refurbed or is a dead cat a trash item? Obviously I don't want to ruin a good item which like I said I would need for emmisons tests so getting a cheap dead item would be the only way to make this viable.

Thanks

 

You can do that.

 

straight forward answer! thanks

do you know if dead converters are scrap items or not?

 

There may be who refurbishes them but i doubt they'd build anything worth having on our cars.

 

In the USA according to my dealer, cats are 100% returned to Mazda. Buying one outright w/o a return is about double the already-huge cost. If true, then never throw one away.

 

If your going to punch out the honeycomb interior to the converter, why go through the trouble of putting a pipe in there. Just run it empty.
Better yet, buy a burnt out/clogged one (to be modified) and sell the good one to someone that needs it. You should make a bit of money on the exchange.

 

This was my worry, I think they use platinum in cats which mazda my be able to get back from ruined units?

I need a cat to get past emissions test every year, which is a big reason I was going to try buy an old one to modify, so in the event my coils or plugs go I wont destory a good cat and cost myself a fortune!

The reason I would use a pipe through it is to maintain more efficient exhaust flow.

 

^ he needs a good one for testing once a year.

Edit- Beat me to it.