Alright, so I bought a 1998 Camaro Z28 about 2 months ago and I just found out today the previous owner cut off the passager side catalytic converter, but left the drivers side one on...in the place of the deleted cat it's just a straight pipe. My question is, is this harmful in some way to the motor or anything else only having one cat on one side of the car? Has any one else done this or heard of this? I plan on either getting headers or a new cat in the near future, but I just want to know if its a big deal or if I can take my time getting around to it.

Thanks in advanced guys!

 

it wont hurt anything. but man, that is very strange. i'm never suprised to hear some of the stupid **** that people do to cars.

do u get a ses light? because if the car hasnt had the rear o2 sensors turned off, u should definitly have a code since there is no cat.
just get some headers and be done with that mess

 

I didn't have an SES light on till just this week. Drove about 450 miles without it going on and then all of a sudden it went on and stayed on. I've heard that's why its on...

 

it should have come on from the get go. o2's are very sensitive. i dont why it would have taken so long.
autozone does free code scanning, i would go there just to see what their scanner says.
get them to write the code down for u. so u can check with other people

there scanners are not high dollar and can sometimes be misleading for more technical codes.

 

one side of the motor has more back pressure then the other. ya need to get rid of the other cat

 

Yep. It will change the fuel trims and all. Like the above, one side has less back pressure. It may not hurt anything just doing normal driving, but it isn't helping. If you plan on running the car, it surely won't help it and then you can compete with the Hondas.

 

does the bottom of the driverside cat look like it has been re-welded? they could have cut it, knocked the guts out and welded it back up?

 

That's a good point. If that's the case I think I would be fine... so, I took a look under the car and looks like they didn't touch the other one. Could be wrong, but I don't know. Speed Inc had the car for a fuel pump and cat back install and noticed that there wasn't one on the passager's side, so I think the driver's side one is still good.


Is it just me or does it seem kinda odd that on the 98-99 ls1's (i think) the driver's side cat is right below the exhaust manifold and the passenger side one is down below basically right under the passanger side seat? I think they changed this starting in 2000?

 

They could of also just reached in with a screwdriver,pipe,hammer etc and gutted the driver side. When I did mine I had to cut the passenger pipe before the cat to gut it and then weld it back but the driver side is right at the opening for the collectors so I didnt need to cut anything, just broke out the honeycomes.