I have an 89 ford with a 302..i have already removed the muffler and cut off the 2nd cat..... Right now there are no pipes after the 1st cat and Its loud as hell.... but the sound is real raggedy and not vary appealing... and was wondering which would be best. Either just run straights off of just the 1st cat (and would this take of the raggedy, jumbbled up sound that it has now??) or go ahead and remove the 1st cat too and then add a good dual out muffler.. i would put the muffler on to give it more of a deep tone rumble but remove the cat to keep it loud (or would the muffler quiet the sound too much)...any suggestions... i just cant make up my mind and just need help choosing between the two. Plus i live in alabama where theres no inspections....so i can get away with not having cats

 

I am not nig on giving advise to pull off cats, its illegal no matter what state your in. But since you have them off already, straight pipes would sound good, maybe with an h-pipe to even the floe out. The old 302's sounded good that way. But if you want to calm it down just a tad but no go nuts, go buy a 30 series flowmaster. It is a racing muffler and its not street legal (but doesnt sound like you care much) so dont tell them it is for a daily use car or usually they wont sell it to you. If you dont get the 30 series, dont bother getting a flowmaster, go with Magnaflow. Real good price, excellent sound and awsome performance. Watch out runing that thing with no pipes on it. Good chance your gonna smoke the valves like it is now.

 

it'd still be loud with a muffler and no cats.i had a 40 flowmaster on my 5.4 and it was still loud as hell (would set off car alarms very easy) just don't put a really restrictive muffler on there and it'll sound good.40 series flowmasters sound really good on 302's.if you ran full length pipe with straights it would take alot of the crappy sound out of it though.

 

Man the best sounding muffler system I have ever had was on a 68 mustang with a 1988 302 motor, true duals with (2) turbo cal 400 mufflers on it. Later on I put headers on it and man, it would about burst your eardrums. Funny thing was is I think i paid like 19 bucks for the mufflers at Discount Auto Parts.lol

I wish the newer motors sounded as good as the old ones!!!

 

they sound identical when you lose the cats,but oh that's a bad thing.