Straight pipe through cat , and power loss...

[silverbird97]

A few weeks ago, my local exhaust shop gutted my cat and welded a straight pipe through it. Problem is, I could swear I lost a significant amount of low end torque. I know that the 3.8 needs a certain amount of backpressure, but I assumed with a stock manifold and formula muffler, I had all the backpressure I needed.

Does anyone have any ideas here? Am I just imagining things, or have others had this problem as well? I'm already considering slapping the Catco cat on....

BTW, I have a 97 Firebird with a few bold on mods...

[toady77]

well i am suppose to take my cat off completley today and just run the I-pipe, but i am kinda worried about the back pressure too.I have the flowmaster 80 series with 2.5 inlet, but i will update you on what happens.

[Takumi Fujiwara]

I posted in the removal muffler, that the loss of torque will be there, but if u are going to do such a thing u are probly gonna need some O2 simulators, if u dont have them ur computers gotta be messing u up. that I could see really taking the performance down. let me know