Well Just bought a 95 SC300 Black on Black. I noticed an exhaust leak type sound coming from the manifold so I dropped it by Midas to have them take a look. this is what the report was:

Previous owner hollowed out the cats
Rattle I am hearing is because of this
The Check Engine diag came up witht he O2 sensor as well
I need 2 new cats...a tune of $900 because a univerisal will not fit on the first one

So I woudl like to know why gutting the cats causes all this and this guy turns in to an ***. I told him I ggutted the cats on my 300ZTT and they acted like straight pipes. They did not cause pinging or an exhaust leak. I noticed when I was almost at the store the car was quieter.

Any thoughts? Should I just go a header? I will be going turbo in about a year so do not want to spend any money that I do not have to.

Thank you
Bill

 

I don't see why gutting the cats would cause an exhaust leak, unless they dug too deep to the side and punctured the cat itself causing a leak :/

The CEL is probably due to the gutted cats though. I'm not familiar with the sc's exhaust system yet, but it's probably the secondary o2 sensor reading that there's a bad cat (code 420 is what I got with my Eclipse with no cat). Either learn to live with the CEL coming up or put new cats on there (might be able to find someone with the a new exhaust system willing to sell you their stock cats).

ps congrats on the new car. Black on black