What are they? Where are they on the truck? What do they do for the truck? Why do people take them off? Do they make the truck sound louder or what? I hear all this talk about cats but dont really understand what yall are talking about. Just hoping yall could help a fella out. Thanks.

 

cats=catalytic converters. they are located between your headers and exhaust pipes, before the muffler. they reduce emissions and make your truck legal. people remove them to get more sound and power.

if you want more sound and power but want to stay legal, look at getting some high-flow catalytic converters. i think magnaflow makes them.

 

yes they should be on either side right after the exhaust manifold. You cant miss them if you get under there. They will also have 02 sensors plugged into them..

People remove them because they dont know any better. Alot of people go out and modifiy their vehicles in a way they think will increase performance, when in fact it could harm it.
For example, on a naturally aspirated engine (non-turbo or supercharged), you need a little bit of back pressure. SO if you were to puts headers, large piping with no cats and a high flow muffler, you would more then likely hurt performance, not to mention be running an illegal setup.

If you HAVE to change them, go with a highflow unit.

 

So when people take off their cats, they just run a pipe right through there? What do they do with the sensors, so the CEL doesnt come on?

 

that is right there is just a pipe intalled in its place.. as for the CEL you can just get simulators to plug in the ends of the sensors to keep you from tripping the CEL.. Hope that helped

 

Im pretty sure you might have 4 cats from the factory. I could be wrong but if you do have 4 cats. You can just cut off the back 2 cats. Then you dont have to worry about throwing codes or getting a simulator to prevent codes. As the back 2 cats have no 02 sensor. Thats what I did, to mine. I just cut off the back 2 cats.