During my recent head rebuild I was tinkering with the idea of leaving the header pipes on when I pulled off the head so I wouldn’t have to remove all the header bolts. I changed my idea when I couldn’t figure out how to get to the top inner flange bolt (the other 3 are easily accessible). Well, the good news there was that all the header bolts came off quite easily and the access wasn’t that bad so that didn’t end up being a problem.
I just removed all the cats from my ‘92 I replaced the down pipe ones one at a time with straight pipes and the centre ones with bullets.
Later in its life I had the opportunity to have it tested for emissions (we don’t need it to be tested here in NZ) and the car wold have passed the test.
Sawzall I was lucky in that at the time I had a Midas workshop. I welded a strap across the two pipes and cut the cat out and replaced with a straight pipe then did the other cat so that the relationship was stable.
Sorry cant help with that one, my ‘88 didn’t come with cats and t was the weedy 2.9 to boot, can you get to it with a long extension and wobbly joint from below or have you already BTDT?
I really do think I’ve been there and … oh wait BTDT (love it).
When I was considering pulling the cylinder head with the headers still attached I was under the car just trying to figure out how to ge at that last flange bolt with no success!
I wonder if I have no other option if I could disconnect the rear of the CAT (easily enough done) and then unbolt both headers with the CAT still attached and pull the whole thing up or done to remove them ?? A lot of extra work but if that’s the only way to skin this cat (get it cat/jaguar … Jezz I knock myself out) well so be it