How many of you guys have had a cop check the undercarrige of your G to see if you are running cats or not?

I never worried about running my test pipes utill the other day my buddy in his civic had a cop pull him over for busting a downshift with a loud exaust. Cop then poped the hood, saw a swaped engine, ect. then used a mirror on a stick to look for cats. He luckely had his test pipe wrapped in the stock cat heat shield, but the cop is sending him to a smog ref.

I know you are all thinking, well he's driving a civic and your driving a G, so its not likely a cop will be suspiscious of my G. I found out today that in Cali, not running cats is like a $2k fine!! Im a little worried not because my break-in on my new engine is halfway done, and i will be throwing back on my test pipes and injen sesexhaust soon, and the combo is pretty damn loud.

What precautions do you guys take while running test pipes?

Do you guys use the stock cat heat shields and weld them on your test pipes? I have resonated test pipes so they kinda look like cats...to a cop.... ok im done, any ideas, stories?

 

Is relatively small power increase over a high-flow cat setup for the small fraction of the time that you floor it worth putting out the emissions of 100 cars the other 98% of the time?

 

I see where you are comming from, but honestly i dont care too much for your opinion. My G35 is not the cause of ozone depletion. Test pipes are cheaper, sound better and put out better Hp gains than any HF cats. If you have any advice, plz share, or you can go hug a tree for all i care.

 

Now if only everybody shared your opinion and had test pipes think of how wonderful the loud, smelly, ozone-depleted world would be!

Anyhow, in my last car I was pulled over by CHP and they checked under my car for the cat.

But getting back to your motives, what are the differences on the dyno between a VQ with high flow cats and one with test pipes?

 

i have to go with chuk on this one. The argument that "well if everyone else did it," also known as "the slippery slope" argument is often used to take a logical idea and take it to the limit of absurdity. It just doesn't make sense. chuck said, he's not the single cause of the ozone depletion. This is logical. Mechee said "well if everyone else runs test pipes ...". This goes against our common sense. Common sense tells us that "everyone else" wouldn't know a testpipe from their crack pipe. So if a relatively small number of people in a large population do it, it will not change the overall smog situtation in California.

Test pipes produce more hp/$, assuming you can avoid the 2k ticket. If you want evidence of this, go to the 350z forums and see what cost conscious, performance oriented people are running.

AS to avoiding the ticket: from asking around, it seems like the best option is to have "dummy cats" which make it look like you still have cats.

 

I may have taken it to one absurd extreme, but Chuck did the same by pretending he was the only driver considering such a ridiculous mod. The more socially acceptable it is, the more likely others are to do the same. If it was taboo, then Chuck would have a hard time finding a shop willing to sell or build such pipes. His car is not a race car that is driven to the maximum performance level its entire life. It is a cushy luxury coupe that might get a few seconds of hard driving every now and then. And the possible 2 whp gain over high flow cats for those few seconds when the engine is at WOT while continuously putting out the emissions of hundreds of cars the rest of the time just seems a little absurd. The cost / benefit ratio seems just a tad high once you consider the cost to society.

But yes as to avoiding the ticket, faked cats can usually get the job done.