You’re not getting it cut with a tubing cutter. No room to spin the cutter around it.
If you actually want to remove and save it, keep chopping u bolts at exhaust mounts until you can get the exhaust system to slide backwards a bit. Then do like the last person did, pry up the already hacked slots in the fat pipe and pull, wiggle, pry, hammer it off in one piece. Then you can jimmy rig it back on.
Back to it, truck will run fine without it. Maybe better. It’s a dumb system with no downstream O2. Actually first year of cats on >8500lb trucks iirc.
If it’s original then it’s quite likely not in the best shape for flow. But icbw.
It has been removed at least once before and really doesn’t look “factory” to me other than it looks like old factory style pellet cats but I’m taking
@bucket word for it.
PS you don’t have to take the tank brackets off nor the exhaust if you raise/remove the bed.
At this point it may have been easier to do that. And still could if you don’t want to hack the exhaust.
Although I’ll admit at this point I’m getting a bit confused now what you’re trying to fix. And why.
Regarding what to get to straight pipe it. Also variable depending on the condition of and how the rest of the exhaust is mounted.
If it’s sturdy and won’t move on either of the cat (with it removed) then 2 wide band clamps and a piece of pipe is the easiest although $20-30 more than using u bolt clamps. If you use u bolts or the exhaust needs the support of a rigid connection where the cat is, then you need to reinstall bell n spigot on one or both ends for strength.
This is also the reason I say take the bed off. It’s no harder really than messing with everything else and it makes all the tank work much easier and more accessible. Just replace everything once that is old and/or suspect at once and nothing else to wrestle around (except the bed off course but that takes 1 minute to remove or replace with 4 men.
