I’d like to clear the air a little bit about the cats.
There are only a few companies that manufacture converter substrate. The primary differences between the substrates are the number of open cells per inch and the material the substrate is comprised of.
Until a few years ago, most substrates used were ceramic and a fairly high cell per inch design.
Fast forward through the product development to today.
Now we have very open metallic substrate cats at very affordable prices.
It really doesn’t matter who you get them from. They work.
We do not manufacture the substrates, and neither does RT.
Today, (not two years ago or even six months ago), when making a replacement cat set, we have a very defined and refined process in order to make them easy to install.
If you have a stock exhaust system and are replacing the stock four substrate cats with single high flow metallic ones, you have to cut the factory pipe at the leading edge of the cat. The cat is welded to the pipe. There’s enough straight pipe to slide a new pipe onto and clamp. Clamping works if the pipe is swelled to the correct ID. If not, it should be welded. The pipe is not 2.5”. We had to create a die for our Huth tubing machine to swell the 2.5’OD stainless pipe we use to the correct ID and we put slits in it after so the round clamps will compress it properly.
On the outlet end of the stock cat, it slides into the stock muffler and is clamped. We manufacture our replacement set to be the correct length so it does the same.
The times today when you hear of people having leaks are when the cat change is not as straight forward as above. Throw in different combinations of headers and cat backs and a lot of times you get into a cut and weld type of situation. The exhaust clamps most use are not designed to crush down thick wall exhaust pipe or pipe that is too large in diameter.
As far as our shop is concerned, this process has been just that, a process, over a period of time, which has been refined. I’ll gladly put our cats up against an RT replacement cat today.
The features of the cats we offer today are as follows:
- 200 cell per inch catalyst provides significantly less backpressure for better flow, higher horsepower and torque.
- Metal foil catalyst withstands extreme pressures and vibration that can crumble ceramic catalyst.
- Stainless steel construction for corrosion resistance (we weld on 304 stainless pipe and use stainless wire also).
- High tech NANO was coat meets OBD2 requirements despite larger cell size and reduced surface area.
- No Interam matting to blow out under pressure from forced induction or high horsepower engines.
Regarding the ceramic exhaust wrap (that does not burn and is not flammable), that item works well for what it was intended to do, but we no longer offer it. It retains more moisture than I’d like. I still have it on my own car. People can still buy the standard exhaust wrap from Summit if they’d like.
Regards,
Sean
