One baaaaddd Cat

[SuzukiGhostRider]

So my gf calls me yesterday on her way to work and said the car was making a funny noise,then died and wouldn't start. This is the Olds Achieva btw. I was like , oh crap, alright I'll be right there. I go up there, fluids all look good, no obvious damage anywhere. So I tell her to start it. Fack, the thing sounded like it had a piston riding DRY in the cylinder! So I had her cut it, went to the house, got my tools and came back. I had her start it again and this time, I saw a HUGE cloud of smoke come from the exhaust manifold area and could smell exhaust BIG TIME. It hit me... the cat is clogged and back pressuring into the engine and killing it. I crawled under it and tapped it a few times. Sounded like I just dumped a can of gravel in there. I told her start it. Fires right off runs smooth. So long story short, I went down and had my muffler guy, Tim, cut the cat and resonator off and put a 18" Glass Pack and new pipe in. He couldn't believe how much SHAT was in the cat and resonator right behind it. He said the resonator saved me having to replace the muffler as the chambers in the resonator caught all the chunks. Whew! Anyhow, she runs GREAT again,more power than ever, so I wonder how long that piece of crap was clogged! 230,000+ miles on the factory Cat,lol. Here's a couple cell phone pics of the removed Cat with the crap in it. What a friggin' mess!!!

So here are the pics. Rather hard to see just how bad it is. There were clumps of shat everywhere in there and it was literally all piled so high you couldn't see past the lip.

[Money pit Beretta]

Mine looked like that on the 83 Z28 after I put a crowbar in it(I was young). Wow, how does that happen?