Okay so catalytic converter and it's removal. Let's start with just the basics. What is a motor specifically? What is a motor? Do well. It makes power. But overall, what does the thing actually perform the function of doing it moves there in and it moves air out brings in cold air pumps out hot air. So if you look at it just like that, your motor is nothing more than an air pump. It does a lot more than that. But if you look at it from this angle now think of some of the benefits of removing restrictions. Let's go ahead and throw the whole back pressure thing right out. The window nowadays, especially the way motors are designed. You don't necessarily need back pressure. Ideally you want his little back pressure as possible, especially if you're all motor because you want something to happen called scavenging. Scavenging. Is this cool little effect where the exhaust flow and the gas is moving out because they're hot tend to be more dense and they're just flowing out a lot quicker. But the pressure difference between the exhaust moving and when the exhaust valves open tend to suck air in, it creates a vacuum. So it actually helps pull more fresh air in during a period called overlap, which is when both valves are open at the same time and take an exhaust are open at the same time and it helps pull bad air out and replace it with fresh air and sometimes a little bit of boost. Not much. We're talking maybe half a psi but it can happen here and there if you're flowing enough. Scavenging is awesome if you're running all motor. That being said, when it comes to boosting cars, you don't necessarily worry about scavenging because you're forcing air into the front. So you're not really worried about creating vacuum or any sort of scavenging type of effect during overlap because you're forcing air into the front. So the cam profiles are going to be radically different as is the valve timing. But at the end of the day you want to get as much air in compress it blow it up as hot as you can without causing any knock and get it out of the motor as fast as you can. Every four cycles like so every 720 ° of crankshaft rotation per cylinder. You want to get that that air fuel mixture in and out of the engine as fast as possible. The turbocharger helps you force air and it helps blow air out at the end of the day but your cat getting in the way because the cat actually has something in the middle of it is going to cost you. Not to mention the fact the catalytic converters with the friction of the air blowing past it and the actual heat of the exhaust cuz it is air coming from an explosion tends to heat up the catalytic converter and therefore hinders more performance and even more so is it starts to get clogged. Removing the cat will open up your air flow. A hell of a lot more. But you're concern is sound as well. So your muffler and your resonator will also cause a little bit of disruption but not anywhere near as much as a catalytic converter. Now your muffler is meant to cause a disruption in your exhaust cuz it's meant to well muffle the tone of the exhaust. That being said, the resonator is what captures most of the sound. The resonator is going to be what deden's a lot of the sound and keeps you reasonably quiet. If you run straight pipes all the way back, you're going to sound ridiculously loud. If you just remove the muffler but keep your resonator you will actually pick up more performance because the resonator doesn't impede airflow like a muffler does because it doesn't put things in the way. It just has baffles on the side of it that kind of disrupt the air and pulling some of the sound. It's kind of hard to explain because I'm not that type of engineer, but a resonator will absorb a good chunk of the nasty sound that comes out a muffler. Pretty much deadens the rest of it, but it deadens it by impeding airflow. So if you look at the inside of a resonator versus the inside of a muffler you'll see the difference and resonator looks kind of like honeycomb shaped tube with another chamber on the outside. A muffler is actually going to have different channels that the air is going to have to bounce around and pass through that it's going to get to The granted they're optimized for. You know performance as far as a stock car is concerned, but stock mufflers will pass through a lot of like right angles and weird things like that. Whereas if you're not worried about noise but you still wanted to sound like halfway decent having the resonator at least for the stock one, that's a way to go to. So if it were me, I would go catless and drop the muffler and then keep the resonator even on an aftermarket exhaust. But that's completely up to you if you want to run a resonator, but most aftermarket mufflers actually do a really good job without impeding airflow too. Sorry if that seems kind of not grammatically correct because I'm using Google speech to text so I apologize for any grammatical errors.
