Well I’ve been called worse @Tester. And often I deserved the compliment. But are catalytic converters required on farm vehicles? I doubt that there is any enforcement of catalytic converter regulations on vehicles not used on public roads. I wonder if the King ranch has some pickups with the cats removed?
The EPA puts it simply.
If the vehicle is originally equipped with a catalytic converter, it cannot be removed or defeated.
Tester
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Yet they sell (or once sold) cat delete pipes “for off-road use only”.
So if he wants to turn his 2017 Malibu into a farm truck, I say go ahead and remove the cat! I don’t think he’ll fit many square bales of hay in the trunk though. I found out that not many will fit in a Lesabre trunk. I’m thankful I also own a truck now. Fear not. No cats were harmed in making this post.
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I find it amazing that people are incapable of comprehending EPA laws.
Question 2.
can I remove a converter from a ’ for “off-road” driving?
vehicle that is’used only
Answer 2. No. The tampering prohib tion discussed in Answerfl
applies to this situation as well.
prohibition pertains to “motor vehicles,” which are defined by
section 216(2) of the Act as “any self-propelled vehicle[s]
designed for transporting persons or property on a street or
highway.”
chassis configuration as meeting the applicable emissions
standards for motor vehicles manufactured in a given model year,
and it is not legal for anyone to “de-certify” a motor vehicle
for “off -road” use.
Tester
In the mid 1970s many Farmers and Ranchers “gutted” their catalytic converters as they were setting their fields on fire.
It’s not that people don’t comprehend the law, it’s just they don’t give two s**ts about it, and if you happen to live in a place that doesn’t do emissions testing, there’s no enforcement of the law anyway. My Bronco didn’t have a cat and I drove it for about 200k miles without complaint from the engine (OBDI, no downstream 02 sensors). I’m not saying it’s the “right” thing to do, but for a lot of areas, nobody cares. Of course on a newer vehicle there’s little reason to do it, as modern cats aren’t a liability and you’ll have to go through the headache of putting in MIL eliminators and/or tune the ECU to ignore the downstream O2 sensors.
I feel sure that there are thousands of vehicles with “test pipes” installed in place of converters for various reasons these days and the EPA doesn’t have the ability to enforce the laws regardless how tough they want to sound. It’s obvious that EPA regulations have vastly improved the quality of air in areas where at one time breathing outdoors most days was a health hazard but that battle was won and the EPA can make themselves look foolish throwing their weight around waving a ZERO TOLERANCE ORDER.
It’s funny these days how from schools expelling a boy who bit a Pop-Tart into the shape of a pistol to the local police enforcing window tint ZERO TOLERANCE has become popular even in the face of being totally stooopid in many cases.
I’m still waiting for any good reason to do this to an almost-new car, other than driving a Malibu across wheat fields…
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I’ve seen some oblique references here that in some engine designs the post-cat o2 sensor reading is used along with the pre-cat sensor in the computer’s fuel/air mixture adjustment. Just an observation from the posts here.
Remember that cartalk episode . . . the one where the guy used an old pipe to bust a hole in the cat, then spent a lot of time hollowing the cat out
And if I remember correctly, he just happened to find that old pipe lying around on the side of the road
I seem to remember the brothers got a good laugh out of that guy 