Please help me confirm what may be fairly obvious.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently replaced my muffler. During this process, I discovered that a portion of my exhaust may be custom fitted- more specifically, the front muffler forward. I attached a picture (sorry for the poor quality). The front of the exhaust is right side of picture. You will notice the rear and front muffler set up does not seem to be the standard 460 part which has a more elongated and cylindrical muffler, a twin pipe connection at the rear, and two front pipe extensions connecting to two front exhaust pipes. Does anyone recognize the pictured as a common 460 configuration, or is this a plain and simple modification? If it is custom, does this mean it will be a chore should I ever decide to return to the standard configuration? I cannot determine why the modification was made.
Looks just like one of the extra cats I had cut off.
My G was federalized by G&K in Santa Monica. It seems that they wanted to ensure sucess at smog testing. They welded in two extra catalytic converters. One was just after the turbo and a second right where yours is seen in the picture. The cat looks the same too. Probably some common after market cat.
Please help me confirm what may be fairly obvious.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently replaced my muffler. During this process, I discovered that a portion of my exhaust may be custom fitted- more specifically, the front muffler forward. I attached a picture (sorry for the poor quality). The front of the exhaust is right side of picture. You will notice the rear and front muffler set up does not seem to be the standard 460 part which has a more elongated and cylindrical muffler, a twin pipe connection at the rear, and two front pipe extensions connecting to two front exhaust pipes. Does anyone recognize the pictured as a common 460 configuration, or is this a plain and simple modification? If it is custom, does this mean it will be a chore should I ever decide to return to the standard configuration? I cannot determine why the modification was made.
Thanks greatly.
It's not a standard 1984 LWB 280GE setup from the factory. (I had one from new.) The factory setup had a mid muffler set in a side to side position between the transmission and the TC. The inlet and outlet were on the same side (passenger). The pipe then ran back to a very large round muffler located just ahead of the rear axle.
Looks like the Federalizer changed the setup to put in the cat. It doesn't look like he put in any heat shielding around the cat. I'll bet that a lot of heat comes up through the floor above it.
It's not a standard 1984 LWB 280GE setup from the factory. (I had one from new.) The factory setup had a mid muffler set in a side to side position between the transmission and the TC. The inlet and outlet were on the same side (passenger). The pipe then ran back to a very large round muffler located just ahead of the rear axle.
Looks like the Federalizer changed the setup to put in the cat. It doesn't look like he put in any heat shielding around the cat. I'll bet that a lot of heat comes up through the floor above it.
Thanks Dutch. You have done a better job than I describing the exhaust setup one expects to find on a LWB 280GE. I was unaware that the forward piece shown is the cat. Why would the vehicle be set up like this? Is it primarily, as Alan points out, an environmental overkill (my G is a Europa import)? Are there any benefits or draw backs to this setup? Should I even care? It seems that if this is a standard cat, replacing that would be more economical than replacing an OEM muffler.
Additionally, yes, there is a significant amount of heat coming up through the floor. Is the remedy, an installation of a heat shield around the cat, an expensive and/or involved project?
Thanks Dutch. You have done a better job than I describing the exhaust setup one expects to find on a LWB 280GE. I was unaware that the forward piece shown is the cat. Why would the vehicle be set up like this? Is it primarily, as Alan points out, an environmental overkill (my G is a Europa import)? Are there any benefits or draw backs to this setup? Should I even care? It seems that if this is a standard cat, replacing that would be more economical than replacing an OEM muffler.
It had to have a catalyst to satisfy the EPA part of the Federalization requirements; and that cat is probably a whole lot cheaper than the OEM mid muffler.
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Additionally, yes, there is a significant amount of heat coming up through the floor. Is the remedy, an installation of a heat shield around the cat, an expensive and/or involved project?
My G500 has some formed waffled steel panels as heat shields placed above the cat. A lot of heat still gets into the vehicle under the front passenger seat. In fact, the underseat compartment would probably work very well as a warming oven.[|)]
Yours has been modified to add a catalytic converter and other things may have been changed at the same time (can't tell from picture). If you don't have any emissions testing in your area, you can probably put it back to stock with no problem. But, if it needs to be tested, it may very well fail the equipment presence test, even before they hook up the sniffer. Regulations sometimes state that a vehicle from a given year MUST have a cat fitted. I don't know as regs are different everywhere. Are there ways around them? Sometimes yes.
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