Can anyone recommend catalytic converters?

[Duke Silver]

If you can get the EPA cat's then I would go with the magnaflow, the CARB cat's are not cheap.
if money is a issue there is a company in Canada that sells some very cheap EPA cat's but no idea how long they will last
the cheapest CARB cat's are catco they have not been lasting me very long but I am not your average driver, my foot is in it all the time.
Eastern makes some for the 5.3l that are comparable in price to the magnaflow but I have never used them since they don't make any for the 6.2l

the magnaflow can be very pricey for the CARB ones, they appear to have a price lock with anybody that sells them, some companys have that ability to influence the price.
no one is allowed to (publicly) sell them cheaper than the price set by the manufacturer, otherwise they get blacklisted and can no longer purchase them.
that's why when you see a price for something/anything online and it if say's "see price in cart" that is there workaround, once you have it in the cart then you can see whatever discount they may offer and the publicly displayed price still meets the guidelines required because any discount is hidden.
Technically a price lock (resale price maintenance) enforced like that is illegal, but nobody does anything about it.
The Federal law and State laws can conflict so doing anything about it takes money.......
kind of like weed being legal in some state's but still illegal at a federal level.

Thanks for the info I appreciate it. I think I'm going to wind up going with the magnaflow cats. Unfortunately, right now I'm given the price of them I'm going to have to hold off. I'm thinking about hollowing out the cats for the time being. Then swapping out the fuel injectors. And recently I had a knock sensor code pop up so I was going to replace the knock sensors and the harness as well. Hopefully this will also help with the misfire I've had with the vehicle since I purchased it back in March or April. I already swapped out all of the coils plugs and wires and it still hasn't gone away. It's showing cylinder three mainly only one idle. A slight misfiring is happening on one too, same deal, only when idle. I've already checked the compression and that was good so I'm hoping that this is what has been causing my misfire.

 

[Duke Silver]

In my experience magnaflow cats tend to blow out quickly and not last no time but I’ve had good luck with flowmaster cats they were the only ones that held up

Just seeing this after all we responding about getting the MagnaFlow ones eventually. I think I might look into flowmaster and do a little more research with the comparison of the both of them before I pull the trigger and purchase one.

 

[Duke Silver]

Back around 2019 or so I realized that I had put federal cats on my California car. I tried unsuccessfully to ask Magnaflow, Walker and GM what the difference was and nobody would answer. They all looked EXACTLY the same at the time. Now, the Magnaflow CARB cats look like GM OE and there is a big price difference. I was looking to see if the different cats would necessitate tweaking the engine's tune for best results. Well, after 80k miles, no, the Federal cats work just fine on my California car!

My truck was originally ordered and shipped to a Pennsylvania dealer and that is why she has California emissions.

I'm from PA so I don't need the CARB cats

 

[Duke Silver]

the only difference is pretty much the number stamped on it, carb certification can cost over a million dollars, big money grab by California.
and if they change the specifications in the law at all they have to do the cerification again....

It's unbelievable the shit they get away with.

 

[Trey Hardy]

Just seeing this after all we responding about getting the MagnaFlow ones eventually. I think I might look into flowmaster and do a little more research with the comparison of the both of them before I pull the trigger and purchase one.

Like I said in my experience over the years the magnaflow cats would literally “blow out” the guts within 3-6 months where a couple other friends ran flowmasters for years with no issues
I think their about the same price just the flowmaster ones hold up better imo

 

[15burban]

When the cat in my pontiac clogged up (common problem on cobalt and g5's) I replaced it with a magnaflow. That was somewhere between 7-10 years ago and still going strong. Maybe I got lucky or their quality went down the crapper like most other things these days.