Ok. Was wondering if any of you mad scientists, (bison, richard clark, jason, shane, jay, etc) flowed a high flow converter, and a non high flow converter. How do we know they're really "high flow" or not. And, what's the difference between a CARB compliant, and a non CARB compliant converter. I know what carb is, but how does that affect converters?
no one has flow bentch tested any cats as far as i know
and you dont need any mad scientist to know about cats
there are basically 3 kinds of cats; OEM, old school 'high flow' and new high flow
OEM: well you dont really need to study this one cus you probably replaced already, if not you will soon.
Old school high flow: CERAMIC centered cores, with a honey comb style design. Boxy, and much better over stock. But still old in terms of release date, hell I remember the old school high flow cats from the 90's and late 80's. ALLL of these cats were CERMAIC centered, honey comb style. These probide 20-40% more flow over OEM cat and were a TAD bit smaller then OEM cats.
New high flow cats: SPUN METALLIC centered, their core is spun and not honeycomb cermaic. There is a cell count on these, starting at 400 cells and all the way down 300, 200, and 100. Because they are METALLIC cored and spun, they are much smaller then old school high flow cats. And because of the metallic materials in the core it doesn't have to be as big, yet it will burn just as many containiments. Because its smaller it all takes less time to heat up to correct opperating temperature. These flow 20-40% more then the Old high flow cats. From experience you can go down as low as a 200 cell, the less cells the more flow obviously, without failing smog tests. 100 cells seem not to burn off enough, and 200 is as low as one should go. This info is from other forums and other people's experience. I myself have a 200 cell fabspeed cat from germany, which is going in soon.
The flow numbers are all claims, no one that I know has tested.
But I know from experience that old school high flow ceramic cat limited high boost. and the new spun cats do not
lag boost on the top end and also allow for passing smog with the correct tune of course.
CARB and NON CARB depict simply that one burns off specific containiments and the other doesn't. No really a huge
difference from what I have read but typically NON CARB cats flow a bit more.
What is critical for cats to work properly is heat, it is important to keep it close to if not on the end of the DP
Good news is that I have read many guys passing cali smog with a 200 cell and a single muffler!
all terms are google verifiable, I spent many hours doing my cat homework, hope this helped
