Hi everyone, I am thinking of fitting a de-cat to my 16vT and have heard that reduced back pressure can cause turbo failiure. How likely is this? the Turbo appears to be in good shape at present. I also am considering replacing the center silencer with a straight supersprint item. Is this likely to cause problems also? My current tail pipe is a marmitte zara.
Thanks.

i put a decat on around 8 months ago and my turbo has started to smoke on idle, dont know if its related though.

It'll place excessive strain on the turbo seals. Up to you. You could stick the cat back on if it starts smoking...

Ive been running a few Coupe`s without cats , had no problems
There is a performance difference without it and quite a bit more noise

i've not had problems with my de-cat.

but I substituted the cat with a small expansion chamber
(aka "bullet') and this preserved some of my back pressure
I suppose.

cheers.
.

Dont bother decatting unless you have a hybrid or roller bearing turbo or you are going to be upgrading to one soon. The standard turbo does not like the lack of backpressure of a decat.

Not sure if mine was related but my turbo went when i was running a decat. I am still running a decat but now have a step gap ring in the turbo which apparently puts less strain on the turbo seals etc, also got a 360 thrust bearing upgrade, but not 100% if that makes any difference to help the turbo out when running a decat?

decat on 16vt has no adverse effects on the turbo, it's only the 20v boys that struggle

a stock turbo won't last long with little back pressure unless it was meant to run with no cat (ie grales, themas etc), a proper rebuild should allow any turbo to run with no cat. The problem is with the seals, cat versions have diferent seal specs which turn out cheaper turbos and savings for the manufacturer, diessel turbos use the same seals....

Most new turbos use positive seals wich can cope with no back pressure...it's still not a good ideia (just because you have a bullet proof vest doesn't mean you can get shot )

My 55,000 mile standard turbo started chucking out A LOT of smoke as soon as I had a decat fitted, cloaking unfortunate followers and passers-by in a thick blue fug

But others have been fine for a while afterwards so I think it's luck of the draw