Your Catalytic Converter Warranty
In this era of AirCare and emissions testing, one of the most misunderstood parts of your car is the catalytic converter, or simply ‘Cat’ for short.
The cat is usually located near the front of the engine, built into the front exhaust pipe and looks rather like a small muffler. Its job is to complete the oxidation process, or the burn process of your fuel, and turn those bad hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide into simple nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
In order to carry out this process the converters are filled with three metals, palladium, rhodium and cerinium, that attack three gases, hence why the term 3-way converter, is applied.
A catalytic converter has no moving parts; it merely acts as a little Pac-Man kind of guy, eating all the bad emissions on their way by. And he can only eat so much, and he’ll be full! And when you cat is full, it will plug and restrict the flow of your exhaust and your car will drive like someone has just stuck a potato in your tailpipe. The engine seems to be working hard, but the car just goes nowhere. We have had customers thinking they have had automatic transmission problems, when the real culprit has been their converter.
The primary cause of your cat getting full is by forcing too much fuel thru him, and this can be done in many ways. One way would be to have an engine misfire on the secondary side, either a bad spark plug or high tension lead. Another culprit can be on the fuel management side of your vehicle, a bad Manifold Absolute Pressure Sensor, a lazy oxygen sensor or a bad Mass Air Flow Sensor. These are two examples of computer controlled sensors that can load your system up with fuel.
The other big problem with converters is that after they heat all this fuel to as much as 2500 degrees, the honeycomb inside will break up into pieces, and it will rattle. Customers will complain about the noise and be expecting to buy an exhaust hanger to repair the rattle under their vehicle, and then I make them sad when they find out they need to spend many hundreds of dollars for a converter.
Then at some point they realize they need to fix their vehicle and ask what the warranty will be on their new purchase and I reply, “Zero” (other than I will warranty it against falling out of your car after I install it).
“But why,” asks the customer, who will describe in length to me lifetime warranty mufflers and other automotive warranties. The dealers warranty them for 80,000K or 120,000K, so why won’t I?
There are no moving parts in a converter, nothing that can break, it is merely a collection of metals in a can, and its performance is totally geared to how the owner treats it.
What the dealers are warranting is their entire emission system, not just the catalytic converter. The cat can never be the problem, only the result of the problem. The dealers are telling you that their Engine Management won’t ruin your converter for X number of kilometers, and if it does they’ll replace it.
If you don’t tune up your vehicle regularly, or if you drive around with the “Check Engine” light on for weeks at a time, you are running the risk of damaging your converter. And don’t forget, it’s your own fault.
We have seen converters ruined in as little as two months due to customer neglect. I can replace your converter on Monday and get you passed thru AirCare, Tuesday you can have a sensor failure you don’t deal with and soon your new converter is damaged. Not my fault and not the manufacturers fault. It’s just simple customer neglect.
I shouldn’t be so hard on the customer, but there are two things you need to know about replacing your converter if you ever have to. Don’t phone around to muffler shops searching for the cheapest converter on the planet, because someone will sell it to you, and now that you’ve read this article you know you will only be temporarily happy.
Firstly, there are “universal” converters in the world that will get you thru AirCare this year, especially if you have a Chrysler or GM front wheel drive product. And for all the reasons listed above, they won’t get you thru next year.
Secondly, converters are not cheap, but you need the correct one for your vehicle and at the time of replacement you need to search for the cause of your converter failure. It didn’t fail itself, something caused it to either plug or break up.
So a Catalytic converter might be one of the few things in this world that you can buy new and get no warranty on, so make sure you pay attention and treat yours nicely!