[meangreen92]

My H-pipe got bent in an accident, and wouldn't seal to to the passenger side header. Tried JB Weld(it blew out), and then paying a guy to try on his lift with an impact wrench. He didn't fix it either. Today I said screw it, and bought a new Mac offroad H-pipe. It's the new three-piece design, so you can presumably change the clutch without having to touch the header studs.
In my opinion, this is the best idea since the metal clutch cable quadrant-pulley. I'm thinking that I can cut the down tubes off my catted H-pipe, and throw on a couple of flange couplers and flare the cut pipes just outside the cats; therefore being able to bolt my existing cats up to the new down-pipes. And I could switch 'em out for the uncatted one:evillol: with not much effort. You could probably make the stock (lower) cats work with this arrangement too.
I'm pretty stoked about this, and just wanted to let everyone know of the possibility, because I know some people are reluctant to commit to an offroad H-pipe.
Tom

 

[BadlandsGhost]

Sounds pretty cool, got any pics?

 

[BlueSteel93]

haha i was thinkin the same thing after i installed my 3 piece o/r mac x-pipe. but you would only be able to fit 2 cats on it insytead of the factory 4 so they would have to be some pretty good cats. but ya that would be a hell of a lot easier to switch out when u gotta smog it.

 

[meangreen92]

I put the new H-pipe on today. They go on real easily this way. I was wrong, though, about being able to adapt the rear portion of my catted Mac H-pipe. When I got it out, I laid the new one over it to compare. The joints on the new assembly were where the cats are on the old one. I'll figure something out even if it's just some heat shields attached to the outsides of the new setup.:winks
The factory setup is the only one I've seen with four cats. Ford calls the upper ones by the headers "light-offs". I don't know of an aftermarket H with those. The factory lower cats might still work if they are far enough back - leaving some room for a few inches of pipe. You'd probably have issues with differing piping diameters, but these can be overcome. They're doing away with the sniffer tests here, but I'm kind of leary of running without the cats. Does sound meaner though.