Why Good Things Take Time

10 Sep Why Good Things Take Time

Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~St. Augustine

We were all children at some point. Being children, our attention span was not very long, so we’d always want things to happen immediately. “You mean to tell me that I can’t have this toy appear directly in front of my face right now? Oh, the horror!” With the sense of immediacy came several old adages from our parents — Patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait, etc. As children, we largely ignored these statements because we never had real-world examples to which we could tie these sentiments. As adults, however, we’ve learned that these statements carry with them a large amount of truth. Especially after growing up, having children of your own and passing these statements on to your own kin, as we grow we can also grow to appreciate a slower pace (and the benefits that a slower pace provides). Specifically speaking, these statements are definitely true when it comes to automobiles.

Choosing to remove the secondary or tertiary catalytic converters is a relatively easy decision.* If you’re looking to increase the noise of your engine a bit, if you’re looking to free up some airflow in your exhaust, or even if you’re just looking for an ever-so-minute bump in your top end power, odds are you’ve considered the cat delete. After all, in theory, it’s a pretty straightforward process; first, cut the pipes around the cats and remove said pipes. Next, find an equal-length piece of pipe. Finally, weld it on.

Easy, right? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, at least if you care about what you’re putting on your car.

Sure, you can go to a different part of town and find a garage that will chop and weld you a test pipe for fifty bucks and have it done as fast as their tools will work. There are several problems with this approach, though. For starters, the quality of their work leaves much to be desired. Not only will the cuts be choppy and jagged, but the welds will look like a science project gone terribly wrong, with bubbles and inconsistent weld patterns. To make matters worse, the quality of pipe that they attach is also up in the air; they might tack on an impure metal they have lying around the shop or a rough, slightly rusty piece that adversely affects the flow pattern of the exhaust. To be brief, there are myriad reasons as to why a quick, cheap cat delete is exactly that — cheap.

We here at Fluid take more pride in our cars than that. After all, this garage was not founded on the principles of making a quick buck and disregarding quality for a better bottom line. We care about every single car that rolls through these garage doors, as we believe in the passion involved in motoring. If you care enough about your car to bring it to us, we want to make sure that it’s cared for properly, even down to something as simple as a cat delete. The metal we use for fabrication is a new piece of high-grade stainless steel that looks beautiful from the outside and provides a uniform flow on the inside, maximizing the total gain involved in removing the airflow-restricting catalytic converter. Furthermore, as we’ve profiled on this website numerous times, Craig’s welding is second to none. The dedication and precision involved in Craig’s work is truly the best example of the dedication that Fluid as a whole entity puts into cars. Looking at second-rate welds next to his are like night and day. Yes, it might cost a bit more, and yes, it might take a little longer, but the end result is a clearly obvious improvement and not just some second-thought hack job. Take a look at this CLK500 who recently underwent a removal of the secondary cats, and you’ll see what we mean:

In short, if you want something quick and easy, something you don’t want to think about and don’t care about the end result, then there’s a variety of muffler shops that we can point you towards; we are not trying to compete with them. However, if you want the underbody of your car to look as good as the paint job up top, if you want to know that your car’s exhaust was modified by people who respect and revere vehicles and don’t just view them as cash cows, come to us.

*Obligatory Disclaimer: We here at Fluid are responsible, and as a result must state that removal of any part of a street-legal vehicle designed for emissions regulation is a crime on the federal level, punishable in all fifty states with a four-digit fine. Cat deletes are for off-road use only, blah blah blah don’t-try-passing-emissions-with-a-straight-pipe etc. etc. Just be smart about it, please.