What should I do about my bad catalytic converter?

Hello everyone, first time poster, and new to cars as well.

I have a 1998 4 cylinder regular cab Tacoma, and my catalytic converter is bad. This has lead me to think about my exhaust system. I understand that the converter is full of junk of some sort and is backing up the exhaust. It's really bothering me and I want to fix it. The only problem is that I don't know hardly anything about cars.

I live in Oregon and there are no emission laws here. And so basically I want my engine to be able to 'breath' as deeply as possible without the exhaust being obnoxiously loud.

I want it to sound deep and healthy, as much air flow as possible.

I've looked into glasspacks and magnaflow exhausts but I just don't know what to buy or what its going to make my truck sound like.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Glasspacks make everything sound like crap, especially on small engines. There's not too many things on the road more annoying than a loud slow vehicle. At least loud fast vehicles don't spend 10 minutes creeping up on you being annoying the whole time. Just removing the convertor won't do much for the sound of the truck. A little extra volume. Depending on the emissions on the truck already it may end up throwing a code. The easiest thing to do is just replace the convertor.

 

I replaced mine with a magnaflow cat. OEM was too expensive. No issues with the cat so far (about 2,000km on it).