That's a good question. The cats are small that are on the car. How could I tell if there gutted?

hmmmm

You'd have to take the pipe off, and physically check the inside to see if someone took an object and broke away the ceramic cats inside.

Okay. I'll have them check that tomorrow first.

Or you could just put on the coupe midpipe and see if it's the sound you like--end of story. If it's not the sound you want then look at the cats etc. It should be an easy swap to take off your stock midpipe and test with the coupe midpipe.

I actually have a straight pipe bolted on at the moment. I like your thinking Rajen. So the Coupe way is the route I'm going. I'll probably have them pull one off to see but i dont see why i would if it passed inspection. I know NC is big on having cats on cars.

The exhaust should stink bad if the cats are gutted. There's no way you won't notice the smell

Last April when I bought the G it had a bad smell to it for a few weeks, but it went away when I started 93 shell gas and got the fuel system cleaned. Now all I have is just sometimes when I get on it you can smell the clean fuel getting burned.

I just got back from the shop. I had basicly a small test pipe with a can size bubble type that had mesh on the inside of it. I had the OEM cats put on it. All I got to say is WOW major difference. It sounds so much better. Don't have a lot of sound inside the car. The only thing is 1st to 2nd gear there's a little rattle that you can barely here out of the exhaust. CIN in Charlotte did a great job on my G

A mesh on the inside? Sounds like you had high flow cats.

=) glad to hear you like your setup. So you stayed with the straight pipe?

It mite have been a cat but it did absolutely nothing but let the exhuast just go straight through it. It was more like chicken wiring in the inside pushed up against the sides. There was nothing in the middle.

I did stay with the straight pipe. It sounds a lot better with OEM cats on. I'm going to get a good set of after market cats, and a uprev done on the G soon I hope. After that I mite put a coupe resonator on.

Do your exhaust work first (and breathing mods if you have any planned) and then do the tune. No sense tuning for a certain setup, then changing it.

O by the way, is your 03 a 'doggy door' model? If so, it has a different ECU from 2003.5-and-up models and I don't believe you can do an uprev tune, though you may be able to get a small timing advance. Better read up!

Just in case you're not aware, this is a doggy-door:

Why not go with a pair of Berk HFC's.. it'll open up the exhaust flow... give it a deeper, throatier sound.. and open up additional ponies as well! Replace the OEM Y-Pipe with and HR Y-pipe.. and you have the beginning of a sweet little system!