Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Not running cats on a vehicle is a choice I cannot endorse. As others have noted it is irresponsible and bad for our air quality in general.
Imagine if everyone decided to do the same? Wonder what would happen? Want government inspections to come back? I sure don't.
Funny that in our fleet we have not replaced any cats in my memory. Even at 500k miles our last truck sold still had it's originals in place and working correctly.
The last time I replaced one was in a 1976 Dodge van where the screen blew out and the pellets clogged the muffler. I can only wonder what you folks are doing to ruin a converter, they are pretty hard to kill IME.
"In the United States it is a violation of Section 203(a)(3)(A) of the 1990 Clean Air Act for a vehicle repair shop to remove a converter from a vehicle, or cause a converter to be removed from a vehicle, except in order to replace it with another converter.,[26] and Section 203(a)(3)(B) makes it illegal for any person to sell or to install any part that would bypass, defeat, or render inoperative any emission control system, device, or design element."
Yep, we should all just disregard the laws and do whatever we want...
Come on. What exactly would one "do" to kill a cat, besides putting it in a plastic bag and throwing it in a canal? Specious reasoning much?
From talking to a Ford tech just today, I have learned that they are actually not hard to kill at all. First thing he said to me was, "Let me guess, it was the driver's side.", and went on to explain to me that he has handled plenty of warranty replacements on vehicles that had no issue at all when the cat failed. Doesn't sound very hard to kill to me.
The only problem this truck had was a failed cat. Everything else is and was properly functioning. No misfire. No overheating. No engine coolant. No leaded fuels. No stuck injectors. No nothing. Just a bad cat.
Don't even get me started on the EPA. They allow gross polluters to purchase the ecological savings from other companies and programs. It's not people removing the cats that's bad for the air quality. It's the EPA giving the stamp to corporations to do whatever they want, as long as they buy credits from someone else, or cause the aggravated damage outside of US borders.
If it's so important to have cats, then the great EPA should force the manufacturers to make them more durable, and warranty them for longer. If the EPA could care less about what happens after 80,000 miles, then why should I? The technology to build a nearly invincible converter has been used in the industrial sector for decades, but we keep getting [censored] that falls apart under numerous circumstances, or for no reason at all.
In the case of the Nissan QR25DE, the cat would fail for no reason, and destroy the engine along with itself.
With BMW SUV's, actually driving the things off-road in BMW's own off-road driving experience, they routinely ran into problems with the cat overheating and sending the engine straight into limp-home mode.
This is by far, not a proven, refined technology in the automobile. I am not going to pay the price for auto manufacturers and the EPA forcing people into a flawed component, and then forcing people to spend thousands in repairs upon it.