Ok, just think about it, say you upgrade your throat, lungs and asshole,,,,you can take in more air and run better.....you can hold more air and exchange more blodd cells for increased stamina, and with a bigger asshole you can get rid of more poo and keep a healthier and more efficient system. I don't really know why I wrote that but it seemed funny at the time.

There's so much BS in this thread, I don't know where to start.

All I'm going to say is:

1. Headers won't hurt your engine
2. Putting on headers but keeping your cats is pointless
3. If you're gonna do it right, put on headers, get rid of the cats, and get rid of the 1" exhaust all the way back

There are a lot of people that are in states that require the cats to stay to register the vehicle.

Texas is a totally different story.

Federal law prohibits removal or replacement of properly functioning O.E. catalytic converters.
However, you're from Texas so this may not apply to you.

Has anyone ever been tried in a federal court for removing their cats?

Also FL, no emissions testing. Hell half the cops around here have mustangs/cameros with no cats.

State law prohibts me from speeding on highways too

Sucks you live in a state where you can't mod your cars

I too doubt that you will be sentenced hard time for removing your cats, would make one hell of a prison story though....as long as you bribe your inspection dude(or lady for you sexist pigs) very well.

How about you can't get your car smogged and if you don't get it smogged you can't get it registered and then you don't get a little sticker so you get pulled over all the time for having expired tags.

Also depends on what state you reside in mister tough guy moderator! How about that?

Not really, we just do our mods and get the horsepower without breaking the law. Also, for a state that can't mod our cars we sure have alot of the manufacturers here SLR,Calmini, Fabtech, Stillen, Edelbrock, Foose, Boyd, etc.

If you want to remove your cat converter it's your truck I wasn't telling you not to do it. It was just a post of what the federal law is about the cat converter as I found on the wesite of the exhaust manufacturers.

New Joisey's got sucky laws like that too.....

I thought if you removed your cats the Check Engine light would always be on, no?

Stone

Well I haven't had cats on my car for 6 years now. I know Cali is a little more strict on emissions standards, but you just have to know the right person to get that little sticker.

A simple resistor/MIL eliminator/O2 sim will do the trick.

Well it's getting a little rediculous on what California sees as illegal now. Don't you need your intake to be CARB certified there? Kind of sucks you can't just run some generic $20 cone filter since it doesn't have that magic little sticker. It also sucks that longtubes (manufactured by Edelbrock) are also illegal there.

Modding your car the California way leaves alot of power on the table.

Sure.

You enjoy your toxic sespool. Are you going to say anything that makes sense any time soon?

It's amazing how much courage people get over the internet.

Since I'm guessing you haven't read the whole thread allow me to catch you up.

The discussion and concerns were in regards to people who have to follow emissions standards to register their vehicles legally. It is quite easy in the few states where there are no restrictions but a totally different situation where we are required to pass an inspection to register our vehicles.

Now that I've done my manifolds and I've seen what makes up the exhaust system, this statement from SLR's website does not make sense:
Here's a picture (sorry for the quality ) of the so-called "pre-cat" and what is behind it taken off my '00 Xterra:


Notice anything? There IS no "main catalytic converter"... just a long piece of pipe (the next thing in the system is the Y-pipe that connects the exhaust coming from the other side of the motor, and then the muffler, and then the exhaust pipe.

The little cat that connects to each exhaust manifold appears to be the ONLY cat in the system.

Some of the earlier federal 2000 models like mine (originally from Iowa)and yours only have 2 cats. All the CALIF models in 2k and those after a certain production date ? came with 4 cats including all of 01-04's.

I would love to have some CA smog legal headers like those that JBA offers for the new models. I just replaced my passenger side manifold and if the other side goes I may looking into modifying some pathy that fit the VG30

Thorley makes a CA smog legal set for the VG30 and I’ve been told with some work they can be made to fit the VG33.

So, have we established what the SLR headers will do for the 3.3 liter emmissions? If anything at all..

My exhaust manifold has been cracked for a while, if it get's worse then I might fail inspection for safety here in NY, not emmissions.

If/when I need to replace the manifold, I wanted to replace it with the SLR headers so I wont have the cracking problem again.
I am not removing the cat. converters on my truck.
I just wanted to make sure that I'm not causing any potential problems in the future.

Anyone?

All of the previous cars I've run headers on before were emmissions exempt because they were 25 years old or older. I never dealt with installing headers on an emmissions car.

OIC

Right, and it pisses me off that SLR calls the upper cats the "pre" cats, since they are actually the primary ones. The non-california-emissions 2000 models only have those, not the secondary/cleanup ones that are beyond the point where the headers go.

Actually, not to be too big of a butt or anything, but you CAN remove the 1st set of cats, install the headers, relocate the rear 02 sensors to BEHIND the 2nd set of cats, and it WILL clean the exhaust enough to keep it within emissions specifications. This HAS been done, this is PROVEN, not supposition. So in that regard, you CAN still be within emissions specs, both visually AND sniffery (is that a word??) AND OBII, with the headers.

However, you wouldn't have the fancy schmancy CARB approved sticker, so in California, odds are, they'd still fail you since you can't prove the headers are CARB approved (they're not).

It obviously makes sense if you're responding to it

But yeah, Texas is definitely a toxic sespool since I don't have cats. Enjoy your cats and CARB intakes

The "secondary/cleanup cats" further down the exhaust stream are actually resonators, not "cats" at all, even on the California emissions trucks.

Removing the resonators does not impact emissions.

Removing, or even moving the catalytic convertors from their original location (with respect to heat), can cause the truck to not pass emissions.

I drove my 02' X without catalytic convertors for 8 months. All it did was illuminate the SES light a couple times. After the light was cleared, it would take a few months or more before the light comes on again. Driveability wise, there was no difference in the operation of the truck.