Gamehunter,

Exactly what is your "experience" , i know what PKRWUD's is and so do most of the older members here .

i trust whatever he says as "gospel" as my truck would not have gotten fixed had it not been for his guidence.

no offense but not knowing you or your "experience" i would go with whatever PKRWUD said .

 

Thanks for the kind words, but it wasn't necessary. Gamehunter is correct for the most part, he just didn't quote me correctly, and as a result his initial conclusion was wrong. I'm sure he's got plenty of experience, though.



Take care,
~Chris

 

I didit to my 92' with no cats and a 90.5" serp belt and wala! how sweet it is we have no emisions regs eather. My cats plugged from the pump not working correctly.


Mark

 

Lemme add my 2¢ to this...

I removed all my stuff a while back. I still have the PCV and EGR hooked up.

The tube on the back of the heads is gone, so's the air pump, the associated tubing, check valves, etc. I've had no problem passing the sniffer test here in Texas or my cat going bad.

It DID NOT add power at all, some of the stuff was broken so I just pulled it and threw it aside.

 

Hi all, first time posting over here, this is where I should have been in the first place. I posted last week, in the newer forum about removing the smog crap and I did'nt get any responses so I yanked all of it off, well almost all of it. I did'nt know the cat would clog, so I guess i'm off to the custom exhuast shop to get a new y-pipe. How long before it clogs? Who would'nt want that stuff off? The systems are old and working around them is a real pain + they really don't do any good anyway. Plus it cleans up the engine compartment and less things to suddenly go wrong when your far away from home. IMO benefits from leaving it on: none. I have a stang I owned for over 10 years with so many mods it would be quicker to list the stock parts and one of the first things to go was the smog stuff. Now, if I could just get some help on lift kits.

 

This is an interesting thread.

A few years back I went to get my 83' F250 inspected and the station told be I need all the stock smog equipment on the truck.(its the law here in NH). Anyway I had bought the truck used a year before and it had no smog stuff on it. I had to find a smog pump to put on the truck. I hooked it up but was told they (inspection station) just wanted it on there working or not. My truck has a factory sticker on it that sais "NON Catalyst". If the pump and the cats work together than why is/was there a smog pump on the truck to begin with? A week after the inspection I took off the pump and it has gone through 3 more inspections w/o the pump (not that it could ever be hooked up due to the full length headers on it).

 

The pump without the cats still has a function. It provides excess air to burn any unburned HC in the exhaust. The problem is running the cats w/o the pump. The cats need air to carry out their reactions (oxidize CO into CO2) properly. Without it they clog up.

 

If you no longer have cats, is there any purpose to the air pump then? I know it also pumps into the back of the heads. Mine is starting to make some funny noises and if there is no use for it, I will just bypass it

 

See StrangeRanger's post immediately preceding yours.

 

First off, I must say i'm vary sorry for not responding to this post earlier. For some odd reason I havn't been recieving any post emails and just noticed this come up on the board.

Mcgyver, I certainly don't want to convey that I know all, because I certainly dont. In fact, I'm having a problem with my truck as we speak that I can't seem to solve. It is running rough on and off (usually week by week) and I have no clue what is wrong. I am not trying to lie to you or say something false. PKRWUD is right, I simply missed a couple key words in his post that changes the point of view. What I said has been through personal experience with my vehicles. And of course, this wont work for everyone either. Such as OBD-II engines having dual oxy sensors and other implifications to help prevent someone from tampering with a vehicles emissions. I just don't want anyone to get their panties in a wad over this.

Removing the smog equipement has little or no change on the engine with the exception of the EGR valve. Of course, this can be deleted through custom chip programing, but I doubt its worth the hassle.

NO power will be gained or lost (once again, from what I have experienced) from removing the smog pump. The cats can free up power for obvious reasons, but on a newer vehicle I wouldn't even think of doing this simply for resale.

Strangeranger, that does have some truth to it, but keeping the smog pump in doesn't solve the problem. The catalytic converter is a catalyst. Meaning, a substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed itself. Most "cats" are produced using Palladium or Platinum, both of which are heavy transition metal oxides. The exhaust gases are passed around the beads of Pt (platinum) and promote the conversion of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide and water, and nitric oxide to nitrogen gas. In an ideal world, our gas that we buy at the pump should burn 100% producing ONLY carbon dioxide and water, however, auto manufacturers have yet to come up with this perfect engine or perfect gas blend.

Of the 3 major exhaust contaminanats that I listed, carbon monoxide and nitric oxide would still have no effect even if excess oxygen was pumped into the exhuast via a smog pump (provided the catalytic converter is removed). True, the smog pump could eliminate a smaller percentage of unburned hydrocarbons, but truthfully, they have less impact on the environment than the latter two. As most people are familiar with carbon monoxide as being a poisonous gas, I wont explain that. However, the nitric oxide is the big problem, and the main reason for catalytic converters in the first place. This is the substance that leads to the destruction of the ozone (O3) in the upper atmosphere through a very complicated set of reactions involving nitrogen and oxygen gas.

You can certainly choose to leave the smog equipment in with a removed cat as it will do absolutely no harm to anything, however, its not going to clean up your exhaust much either, nor will help pass emissions, as they do test for a variety of gases depending on the state/location.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but maybe somebody will find it a little bit interresting at least

GH

 

I am no *expert* but I've had lots of college courses on emissions and involved in enforcement of it for 14 years. Two things I would like to add:
OBD II arrived in 1997 if I'm not mistaken, so that should not be an issue for you.
Removing/rendering inoperative emission control equipment is a violational of Federal law and is persued by the State and/or Federal agencies. While many agencies do not aggressively persue emission issues some *do* persue (or at least they did up untill 1999 when I was in it) so called *professionals* who "ought" to know better......such as garages and muffler shops. I've seen enough posts here to know that a *lot* of shops are clueless on this and the fines can be like $5 to 10 thousand dollars per violation.....or even per cat removed.... *and* 6 months jail time per offence!
In closing, you *will not* see any difference except for room under the hood if you remove anything. At best, it won't hurt, based on the fact you have a truck and the year it was produced.

 

Actually, the three-way cats on the earlier trucks or the dual cats on the more recent ones perform different functions. The front half of the cat (before the air tube) reduces the oxides of nitrogen, a process which requires no excess air. The air is required in the rear cat to oxidize the CO into CO2.

Any unburned HC will be burned in the converter but doing so will dramatically shorten converter life. The reason for introducing excess air into the exhaust upstream of the converter is to protect the converter by burning the HC before it gets there. Unfortunately, this raises temperatures in the manifold and actually increases the NOX in the exhaust stream, making the converter even more necessary.

 

I'm aware of Ford vehicles as far back as '94 that had OBD II, but it was mandated in '96.