Am considering adding catyletic (sp?) converters to my 65 but am wondering 2 things:
1. How much willthe cats alonecut down on environmentally unfriendly gasses?
2. How much HP can I expect to lose (based on a 350hp engine)?
Things to factor in are that I have dual exhaust w/ headers and flow 40,s and would run two cats. Also I currently don't have a H pipe but would have one installed at same time.
1. None. The atmosphere is already loaded with every gas your car will emit. Worry about things that are within your control. Nature will take care of herself quite fine.
2. Not much if you get the right cats.
3. What other mods are you planning to support your new mega-heaters (in a car not design for them)?
Idaho, Glen, Idaho - and the prevailing winds go East, so it's Montana and Wyoming that get the crud.
Seriously, your car is not set up to give the converters any opportunity to function. On older catalyic converters equipped cars, there were retard distributors, air injectors, special heads and more odd devices to make them work poorly at best. When computer controlled engines were developed, all that stuff came together.
+1 on being completely nuts. Why choke down a perfectly good classic engine just because you may want to save the spotted owls in Oregon.
Bwuahahaha!!!
Seriously though, you don't wanna put cats on your car. All they do is reduce the amount of "bad gasses" you produce(by a marginal amount at best)but in turn create 2 tin boxes under your car that become classified as hazardous waste by the EPA and have to be placed in a toxic waste dump forever. That and it'll mess up your power, the heat they generate in your exhaust gas will throw off the way the system functions, the exhaust will get hotter and expand and cause the exhaust system to become more restrictive.
And like Jim said, your car was never really intended to let them work right, especially without all the bells and whistles. Cats were a band aid on a problem that no one knew how to fix back in the day, and have since been mandated and without computer control are basically worthless(unless your goal is to reduce power).
All you'd see with cats would be a decrease in power and mileage. If you want to be environmentally friendly buy a new Hybrid(though their effectiveness is debatable as well)
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Who cares how much horsepower it has, all that matters is how fast it goes!
Best run 13.23 at 106.97mph with a 2.183 60'
Times from before tune and driver mod.
On my 79 Dodge van B200 360 V8, I used a 'catalyic converter test pipe', except when I needed to get smog tested. I sold the van at 110,000 miles (got a Ford E250) with less than 5,000 miles on the 'cat'.
Sometimes J C Whitney comes thru.
Jim
cats on a classic?
