Which Hi Flow Cat Should I Get?

[MrStabby]

This is from the metal cat site, so its hardly unbiased, but its a start.

"This especially holds true to the Magic , 'Xforce' and other 'new brands that continually enter the market under aspiring 'New Name Brand' companies. Why not as an exercise call them and ask them to fax you through their EPA/CARB/Euro test results from manufacturing factory?

UPDATE : Credit to Xforce , they have now deemed their cat ‘For Race Use Only’ . "

[Bakes]

Yeah, I saw that. So I assume the Metal Cat ones must be street legal

[coaster]

my r33 had a melted and collapsed metal cat. had only done about 10000k's with the cat in there.

Made the car run really badly and wouldnt boost at all. took me ages to find out it was the cat...

[TALBO]

What exactly is wrong with ceramic cats?

[wolverine]

^^^^ x2

[Jaysiin]

i have a 3"magnaflow cat on mine. cheap. made the car lil bit more louder and revs quickely to hi rpm. however its just a tad. its just a cat, your not gonna get 3984723947329 extra kw from the swap.

[MrStabby]

What exactly is wrong with ceramic cats?

I think there are limitations with what you can do with the material - they have to run finer air low passages and therefore flow less. If you look at the 200 cell metal substrate cats the holes that the air flows through are relatively big. On the ceramic i've seen the holes look like pinholes. I'd guess ceramic it too brittle to be made as thin as metal.

[TALBO]

Thanks, reason I ask is I have an AM Performace 200 cell cat that I think is ceramic. I've only had it on for around 3-4 weeks and thus far no problem as you would expect.

[bozodos]

my cat got filled up with shit (thinking due to a rich running motor not allowing it to work properly), then kinda melted back towards the back half of the shell, hence me having to bash it out. Dunno if it was a highflow or what, but I'm sceptical about buying another one cause I don't want to be replacing them on a regular basis!

[rtune]

this topic confirms what I was told.. if you have a high powered RB - and especially do track days - then there is no

good cat solution and when they go bad it might not be immediately obvious they have gone bad.

basically none of them can withstand sustained blasts of 800 degree exhaust for long.

[Blitz]

What exactly is wrong with ceramic cats?

Absolutely nothing.

As long as the cat decent quality and well made, and is suitable for the level of tune of the car in question, they are fine.

They may not be suitable for heavily modified or heavily fueled cars - For applications like this you would probably want to look towards a metal cat (ie Catco)