Bought my 94 Sunrunner last fall, 140,000miles and obviously been through the mill and a backyard body/paint job. No big deal as I want a back and forth to work driver that can take our brutal winters. Love this buggy, weak power, but a goat on hunting trips and new snowies made it the bomb is snow and on ice.
Last few weeks it starts losing power, pinging like a bugger under heavy throttle, and finally some little exhaust hose thingy going to a diaphragm next to the throttle body pops off. Hmmm I say, thinking exhaust backpressure and praying nothing more. Surfed around here and found lots of raves about header/2" exhaust...
Took a break from working on the drag car and pulled the collector off with the cat converter welded to it. 3' piece of rebar and a hammer went to work and in 10 min. had the converter down to a empty shell. The converter material looked good except for a piece of cloth like stuff that came out with the chunks. Hmmm, the culprit??
Put the collector back on, cross threaded all three nuts/studs on the exhaust manifold. Remove the manifold and pull the studs out drill and retap to 3/8"N/C and solved that problem. Get it all back together, and SHAZAM! Didn't get whiplash or anything but it sure made a great difference, even before it was giving trouble.
I know I'm in one of the last bastions of the Free World for Fuel Burners, and everyone else will have to replace their cat converters rather than my environmental hatchet job, but its certainly worth doing on our higher mileage buggies. Id try it first before buying a header and new pipe/muffler....
Cheers!
