I have heard of them glowing when plugged up Ive just never seen it. Time for a upgrade or just hollow them out for now to get by. I hollowed them out before on my old truck just make a cut after the cat and ram a steel bar into the pipe to bust up the ceramic, start it up and hit the gass all the pieces will fly out. Add a coupling when your done its a 4 dollar fix.

 

If you want to keep your car street legal, a lot of muffler shops will sell you a compatible cat that is easily and cheaply installed. I have heard that low power and red hot cat equals plugged or failed cat.
Gary

 

usually gas mileage is the first give away

 

hey all thanks for the help. the bastard was clogged. new pipes on the way.

 

HA... kinda what I thought.

 

yup it is definetly plugged, DEFinetly get a new ones ASAP or get a catless h pipe, i got a story for ya............. I just got my new BBK throttle body and got it put on and i was ready to start it up at about 9 o'clock at night. i bumped the idle up like the dirctions say and fired it. The car was idling at about 2500 rpm. Everything was fine and then about 3 minutes into it then i noticed a light bit of smoke. It seemed as if it was getting worse..... i walked around to the side of thecar and before i knew it the WHOLE car was covered in smoke!!!!!!! i shutit off as fast as i could, looked underneath to see what the hek was going on and then PHEEEEWWW, something caught on fire!!!!!!! MY BABY WAS ON FIRE!!! i ran around trying to find the hose frantically and mean while my uncle ran into the garage and grabbed some winshield washer fluid. ran back to the car and hit the ground, he unscrewed the cap and right before he threw some on the fire went out. the best part of this story is that that the "winshield washer fluid" that the was gonna throw on there was my Blue Thunder 20% Nitro fuel for my R/C car!!!!!! man thats would have been ugly. nothing was damaged thankfully but that was the scariest 1 minute of my life!!! pheeeew! it turns out my cats were plugged and when the car was running the cats started to glow red form all the heat and then caught fire to some oil that was on the underside of the car. Thats when i got my headers, CATLESS h pipe and flowmasters So yes, definetly get this take care off!!!!!!!

 

you plug the Cat up for sure, that caused the back presure that caused the backfire. A new cat is not cheap but not bad priced pick them up new under $100. Just make sure your pipes have no leaks.

 

make sure that it's not pluged due to a motor problem. Running lean can do that to a cat. look for fuel dilivery problems as well as vacuum leaks.

 

Running rich could cause that as well.

 

i need a air/fuel gauge![:@]