Replacement Front Pipes

[SVX_MY_BABY]

I was told you may be able to replace the front pipes & pre-cats with Mustang parts. Any info greatly received.

[svxcess]

Here is the email Ray (halistan) sent me telling me what he did:

With my SVX the front cats had gone completely bad and the seal between the front cats and the third cat was corroded and leaking which sounded really bad. So, here is what i did. The shop showed me the front cats from a 5 liter mustang and they looked just like ours. He said they were the stock cats from ford, but were good enough for me. When i was deciding what to do he told me that the two mustang cats would be enough for my engine and that the third cat wasn't really needed and that if i replaced it with the flex pipe (rather than replacing all the seals between it and the front cats..which would be about $400 to replace) that it would increase the flow a lot and give me more pick up when accelerating. So i went ahead and got rid of the third cat and put the flex pipe in its place. He was right! The pick up was dramatically increased... but part of that was due to having two new unclogged cats in the front.

As for the resonator, i had that taken off 6-7 months ago when it got cracked and was sounding bad. I didn't want to pay the $350 for a new one i just had them replace it with pipe for $40. The new exhaust (new cats and all) ran me $300.

Like i said before, the cats were just from a stock mustang. I beleive he said it was a 5 liter, but it could have been a 4.6 or something. Nothing special. Sorry i don't have the part numbers but it shouldn't be too hard to find out if you call a ford dealership or parts store. For the O2 ensors that plug into the pipe after the front cats, they just cut a small
opening in the new pipe and welded a screw piece onto it to screw in the sensors.

Overall, i am very happy with the new set up. I got rid of the terrible sound that was coming from my car and it performs a lot better than when it was stock. Hope this is some help to you. It shouldn't be too costly where you are...it's sure a lot better than what Subaru wanted to replace all the stock stuff ($1100 for just the two front cats and the seal in front of the third cat...then labor was somewhere around $500)

We took his car out on Interstate 65 very late one night at speeds we won't mention here (Marisa may be reading this...) The car is a bonafide free-breathing dragon. You can really feel the unrestricted flow of exhaust coming from the engine. What surprised me was that you could engage power mode at 115mph and the car would really pull away. The next chance I get to get to Kansas City I'm going to have Yakov do this particular brand of magic to my pearlie.

Thanks again for the wild ride and drive, Ray.

[Beav]

They don't have to be Mustang cats, in particular. You can use universal cats put in place of the stock ones and accomplish the same thing. Any decent muff shop can fix you up. When I left Midas a few years ago universal cats were $69.95 - $99.95 plus installation.