My 2 Cats are bad but my state doesn't require emissions test due to age of car. Rather than replace I am wondering if cutting them out and replacing with a straight section of pipe is a reasonable idea (i.e better performance, a little more throatiness in the sound). I am concerned that the cats provide some amount of required back pressure and removing could cause some negative performance problems or backfires. Need to do something as I suspect they are getting clogged up and hurting performance. Any ideas will be appreciated Thanks!