PursuitSpecial
Well-Known Member
I got home tonight and opened my hood to check on the engine and the entire engine bay was bathed in glowing red light from the pre-catalyst thing under the exhaust manifold. The actual catalytic converter itself has been removed but I left the pre-cat or whatever it is in place. For some reason it's getting insanely hot, I don't think it's stopped up because the car doesn't drive any different than normal and has the power you'd expect from a slant 6. The car doesn't act stupidly rich or anything, but this could be indicative of the fuel mileage problem I've been having. Now, recently, I've also had problems with the carburetor freezing up in cold wet weather, so I hooked the breather up to the manifold and put straight vacuum to the air cleaner valve so it's always intaking air straight off the exhaust manifold. It solved the icing problem, but is there any way it could cause the engine to put tons of unburned fuel in the exhaust? Maybe if there's an exhaust leak in the manifold it's sucking in exhaust gas instead of oxygen and going rich and not burning all the fuel? I don't want to drive the car until I get this solved, the cat was so hot it could easily start a fire.