Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Can I buy an exhaust pipe w/o pre-catal installed?

my poor 95 V6 GL tour has been suffering from
slow accelertion, denotating, high gas consumption,
and other chronic symptoms for a long time.

I am pretty (99%) sure that at least the front bank
exhaust pathway is choked by the [censored] pre-catalyst,
because each time I switched on the venting system,
I was poisoned by the sulfur stink, and had to roll
down the side windows. I can even observed a seeping
of gases from the front exhaust pipe when I creeped into the bottom of the car and look upward when the motor is running.

I hate to do the gutting work, coz I am afraid that the
sulfur and nitride rich exhause gas will come out from the hole and suck back into my car, poisoning me when I turn on the venting. I want to just replace a new pair of exhaust
pipe. Does anybody know if the new pipe is pre-installed
with the catalyst or not? I think the main catalyst is
funcitonal enough to handle the tail-gas.

btw: I'm really sick of ford's dealer and their service.
Before the recall expired this June, I brought my tour
several times to local dealers and indicate to them
that the car had apparent symptom of failed pre-cat.
They just insisted that there is no evidence that it
is bad, and they had no way to judge the CEL is
due to the pre-cat.

Well yes you can get MSDS headers that come without the catalyst material.

also buckshot motorsports sells stock exhaust manifolds with out precats (they gut them for you). then you send them your old ones. they are about $80, but i think that is after the refund you get when you send your old ones back.

If you go the route of either buying exhaust manifolds from someone else that come with gutted pre-cats, or if you do the gutting yourself, you will probably have to also buy or fashion some MIL eliminators to keep your car's computer happy and ntot get 'check engine' messages on your dashboard.