Finally got my 2.25 inch n/a exhaust

[legacylover21]

So it happened the other day on my birthday. I got a 100 bucks from my dad as a gift and decided to spend it on my car because my car deserves it.

So i make the trip to my local exhaust shop. I told him all i wanted was a 2.25 pipe from the cat back. he said ok 85 bucks. He jacks the car up and says do you wanna take this pre cat off as well? I said what pre cat, subarus have two cat backs, right? He goes on to say some cars have more than one and the other is a resonator.

He assured me i would pass smog and yaddy yadda that i would have more power.

So takes off the cat puts pipe on drops the car. i get in my car turn on the engine and holy 2.2 n/a batman it sounds like a frekin muscle car. louder than my dads 91 turbo leg with just a muffler. So i take off down the street and damn what a difference loud as hell too, tooo loud. get home and my dad goes off at me saying i need to get a resonator.

well there is no point to this story other than to say 2.25 inch makes a difference with a performance air filter ( i have a fram airhog) and you feel it more even under heavy load.

My question though is does removing that mid cat make me vulnerable to failure at smog testing here in CA?

[Legacy777]

You'll still probably pass with just the front cat. I believe each cat does something slightly different. Vikash (vrg3) I think went over it in a post some time.....or I may be thinking of someone else.

[supernoob]

The precat is usually just there to light off more quickly and handle the smog while the secondary cat is warming up.

[vrg3]

He called the downstream cat a "precat?"

I don't know much about California's emmissions inspections, but altering the number of catalytic converters on a car does in many states make the car not emissions-legal. I don't know if your inspector would realize that the car came with more than one cat though.

I wuold guess that removing the downstream catalytic converter in our cars would probably result in increased hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions. I don't know if the increase would be enough to put you over the limit, though; in other states Legacies have passed sniffer tests with no cats at all. It probably depends on whether they use a dyno and what the exact limits are.