97 f150 cats

[mopar man]

I just bought my fiance a 97 f150 with the 4.7 it ran great then it lost ALL power after checking the pressure infront and behind the cats all four are plugged and times are hard after i bought it on the premise it was a great truck and anways is there any way I can straight pipe it and by pass the second o2 sensors to save some cash I know if I leave them out it will run very rich and cause more problems down the road for me and before any one goes off the deep end here lol there are no emission laws here in nebraska any help would be greatly appreciated

[65comet]

I'm not familiar with your year, so I don't know if this will apply. Some front cats have an internal system that is like a ceramic/clay consistency. The rear cats are more of a wire mesh. Sometimes the front cats will fall apart and send their guts into the rear cats catching in the front of that wire meshing. If this is the case the rear cats can be taken off, banged and tapped to get the junk to come out the front inlet to clear it out. You should be able to see some daylight coming through and probably 1 to 2 cups of pieces of the other front cat that was clogging up this rear one on the ground that you tapped out. This is one possibility if the front cats are of that type. The cats could just be clogged from age, bad gas and burning oil in the engine.

[mopar man]

Ok thank you yea they do have that porcelan or how ever you spell it lol honeycomb filling on the pre converter I had to take a saws all to them cause the fantastic designers decided to weld them all in as one piece but I did it and soaked the actual converter in mineral spirits and rewelded them and now running like a champ thanks for the help