Loss of power?... oh no.. it's the Cat!

[sjez]

Does lightning strike twice? Well it did in my case.

I drove down from the Adelaide Hills to my son's place in my wife's RAV 4.

That night, when I went home the car had lost power and was really struggling to climb up the hills.

The next morning I started the car and heard that tell tail noise of what sounded like gravel in the exhaust system. Oh no... heard that noise before in my Camry a couple of years ago.

So... I booked it in to the local Toyota dealer. Drove down after morning peak traffic hoping that the engine wouldn't stall on idle.

"Yeah no worries mate. we'll have a look and call you when we are any the wiser."

That afternoon the phone call came.

"Hi. About that RAV4. You're quite right.. it's the catalytic converter. We do have a replacement. How much? Aw about $800. plus the time we've spent on it so far. What caused it to go? Dunno. Yep you're right. it might happen again. Ok we'll get on with the job."

15 minutes later.

"Oh hi. That quote we gave you. That's not the part. We've got to get it down from Sydney. So you'll get it back in a couple of days. And by the way the part actually costs $1800 plus labor."

"Bugg*r!!! that's a lot and you don't know the cause." "Look you'll understand if I ring around for a better price?"

So, with the mechanics understanding I rang around.

I called a local Exhaust dealer.

"Yea sure. Bring it in tomorrow and we can have you up and running in 2 hours...tops. Cost? $450. Labor? Naw mate that includes the labor."

Well I just saved myself over $1500 dollars. But still not any the wiser re the reason of the failure.

10 minutes later.

"Hi, Toyota here. We had a look and found that it's your ignition coil. That's running poor and so that's caused your problem. We put a spare one on and it's running really sweet now. We cleared out the junk from the catalyst and it's barely a matchbox full. Come and pick it up."

The cost of the parts and labor still cost me about $500. The car is running fine (even better than before) but even though I was hit by "lightning" again it didn't cost me well in excess of $2400.

Well you got to be lucky sometimes!!

[SuperDave]

Yep, my cat failed about 6 weeks ago. Since the cat is part of the mid pipe on the Corolla the Toyota price for a while mid pipe is $2666. In the end I am now running half the mid pipe from my Dad's Celica and dad now has a full exhaust system, engine back for less than that $2666 value.

Cats can be picked up from the states for less than $300 delivered, they are so over priced here.

[sjez]

Yep, my cat failed about 6 weeks ago. Since the cat is part of the mid pipe on the Corolla the Toyota price for a while mid pipe is $2666. In the end I am now running half the mid pipe from my Dad's Celica and dad now has a full exhaust system, engine back for less than that $2666 value.

Cats can be picked up from the states for less than $300 delivered, they are so over priced here.

Did you ever find out what caused it to fail?

The mechanic told me that I should be lucky. He recently dealt with a customer who had a twin exhaust system.... both cats gone. I guess he went elsewhere to have he job done.

[Mole]

Holy crap! My whole headerback stainless mandrel exhaust cost less then that!

Best mufflers has good Magnaflow cats in their online store for well under $300 delivered.

[SuperDave]

Did you ever find out what caused it to fail?

It just fell apart, no external damage to the cat at all, the insides look fine apart from it coming loose from the wall and bouncing around and breaking bits off. So now 70% of my exhaust is from a Celica.

Magnaflow show a couple of examples of cat failure http://car-sound.com/04basics/04failures02.asp