A little background.. I bought my 2k2 about 3 years ago, and its had this little rattle during light acceleration since day one. I've put about 30k miles on the car since then, and every time a CEL appears (usually o2/precat related), i just clear them or ignore them.

Well its gotten bad enough that i'm starting to lose power, and can feel the engine pulling timing (probably because of a clogged precat, or the rattling from the precat triggering the knock sensor?)

Oil consumption is about half a quart every 3k-4k miles, so I don't think that the engine is toast just yet.

So i searched, and all i can find are references to 49-state legal (not california) precats.

For those that can sympathize, I'm broke with kids, so getting a set of Brian's finest isn't going to make it past the wife radar.

So I'm considering either..

1. pulling the precats and hollowing them out. someone mentioned that doing so will develop a nasty exhaust leak? Anyone have a good FAQ on how to remove the precats?

2. do a full fed-spec conversion? should still pass smog and not trigger any visual cues?

3. anyone have a pair of used CA precats they want to sell?

thanks in advance

 

http://forums.maxima.org/west-coast-13/

 

I wonder has anyone ever removed all the precat material from the manifolds and ran O2 simulators, to keep that OEM look?