A carbureted engine without sophisticated electronic mixture controls capable of adjusting the fuel mixture in a VERY narrow band of operating range (0.5 volts +/- 0.2 volt on an O2 sensor) several times a second CANNOT run a catalytic converter. The converter will experience a catastrophic meltdown within a very short time span.
Is that beck on topic sufficiently?
Jerry
What about all of the carbed vehicles from the 70s and 80s that ran cats from the factory? We never had a catastrophic cat failure on our 84 C15 with the I6 in 150k miles. I can't say how effective it was after that much time, but it did not fail.
You can't get away with as rich of a mixture if you have a cat or it will cause the cat to fail, but a carb in good working order that is tuned to run close to stoich will work just fine with a cat.
