Rattle, what is this rattle? Options

[Euphoria]

Hey, had a rattling problem somewhere in the exhaust recently which I believed was the flex pipe, had it replaced and the noise is still there so I'm fairly sure its the cat, now as far as I can see in the Australian ST204 there is only one cat which is on the manifold? so I looked up on Ebay and they seem the most expensive ones and as for getting them in Australia I'm sure they are super expensive so I have a couple options.

I looked at my friends mums celica recently and noticed it had headers and where my cat was, it looked to have none and the o2 sensor was lower, why is this? would there have been a cat in there that couldn't be seen perhaps?

another option is perhaps gutting the cat until I find one at a wreckers or something, I've heard people say this lowers power and makes it louder, I've also head it makes it no louder and no more or less power, whats really the answer?

thanks, this is driving me crazy.

This post has been edited by Euphoria: Apr 12, 2010 - 11:30 PM

[808celica]

i would say on the headers, the o2 sensor is lower just because of the design 4-2-1 (if it is that type). most headers i seen on any car usually has the sensor slightly lower. On my car I only have 1 cat. converter also, its the same as yours. Also removing the cat. just frees up the flow of the gases. As for noise im sure that the noise level will go up slightly or alot.