Catalytic converter replacement recommendations

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So I called a different muffler shop in town. They quoted me ~$1000 to cut the old cat's out and replace them. They said they would only replace two. He said it only needs two, an upstream and a downstream to run properly. Stock it has 4, which does seem excessive. Does anyone have experience with changing this from 4 down to 2?

The “cats” on the Y-pipe are technically pre-cats. I don’t see why going to 2 cats over 4 would be a problem knowing that. Except if you live in California.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Really, even one cat should be ok, but I’m not a mechanical engineer. Just all of my rigs have just one cat and they are fine.

If the shop is keeping the old cats you should get a discount. Last I checked Ranger cats were worth like $40 each here.

 

[JohnnyO]

I used a universal generic cat on the Jeep my daughter used to have and it was fine.
The cat itself was probably fine, no CEL, but it looked like it was welded on by Moe, Larry, and Curly and it leaked and wouldn't pass state inspection.
I had to get a Y-pipe with cats for my old Sport Trac and it was $800 just for the part.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Going from two per bank you would be fine going to one per bank... The reason there's 4 cats is the front ones have a more coarse substrate and might not even have precious metal in them, more to just heat up and burn off the hydrocarbons then the rear cats will be larger and a finer substrate to actually have a chemical reaction to convert the CO and NOx into their more acceptable forms. Going to single cat per bank would just be a loaded cat and do everything at once...