So, when I bought my C5, it didn't come with cats. Straight pipes with muffles only.

I lived in a non-inspection county.

Now, however, I live in an inspection county.

They do not do a visual inspection on a lift or anything, but that's beside the point I believe.

I'm going through close to a full rebuild right now, and am getting close to putting the exhaust back on the car.

What do I do?

I've read a bunch of different opinions, including the idea that I should just give a really lean tune before going in and swapping the tune back afterwards every year. While I'm not AGAINST that necessarily, it doesn't seem like the best option. I DO have a tuner though, and it's not like I can't make it run lean for the half hour to go get emissions done.

When I look at high-flow cats, they're outside a reasonable budget for me at the moment. I'm already behind monetarily and telling the wife that I'd like to drop ANOTHER $500 on the car (since I have straight pipes that I'd not prefer to cut) would probably get me stabbed.


At the end of my rope on this problem.

I've even looked at junkyard ones, since they're relatively cheap, but have no guarantee that they'd work.

Thanks,
-C422

 

Do you have a way for a shop to check how clean it is running now?
I seen some eBay options for cats that weren't too pricey.

 

Cant you have a muffler shop weld in two $50 cats?

 

Depends on what they do for testing. Here for obd2 cars they dont do an actual sniffer probe, they just plug the computer into the obd2 port. As long as you dont throw any cat codes you should be good if they dont do a visual.

 

Well, I just finished doing a rebuild of the entire drive line myself. Car has 200k miles on it, and even doing all the work myself, rebuilding the engine, transmission, differential, clutch, and all the rubber suspension parts (and a bent toe link) wasn't cheap.

I'm already over budget and my wife's already pretty unhappy that it's not done so she can have her garage space back :P

I was quoted $250 to have the two cats welded in, and each cat was $85 for the cheapest knockoffs around (checked Advance, Auto Zone, Summit, O'Reilly's, and both Chevy dealerships nearby).

I don't particularly want to put crap cats on the car after basically restoring the entire drive train.


As for checking with a shop to see how dirty it is, I'm not super familiar with the process. I'll ask my wife about how hers went (as far as OBD2 or tail pipe) when she gets home, as I've never had to do emissions before.

Thanks,
-Kyle

 

I did a mechanical restoration on mine as well. It doubled my original budget. I gave up on worrying about the money. You only have so many choices.

You have to check with the people in your area to see how the inspection works.

 

Flowmaster makes the 200 cell metallic core cats for around $85 each. That's as high flow as you're going to get. Not sure if they would pass a sniffer test or not; they might with a good tune.

 

Check out this thread, looks like he has everything you need...

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...s-air-box.html

Good luck... GUSTO