i'm a long time lurker but a rare poster and am posting now cause i got a bit of a dilemma...

so i dropped off my car at the dealer to get an oil change and to also have the emission recall taken care of...

today i got a call from the dealer rep telling me if i realize that i have an aftermarket catalytic converter and exhaust...now i knew i had an after market exhaust (still didn't identify what kind) but the catalytic converter is news to me...(i got the car used with 10k miles on it over a year ago)

now they're still doing work on my car but i'm afraid they'll use the aftermarket catalytic converter against me now...does anybody have any experience with this? what can i expect from the dealer? what can i tell them?

if there is a need to replace the cat can i ask them to give me a stock one or because its aftermarket, i'm stuck paying for a replacement even though my aftermarket one got damaged by the engine?

if anyone could reply with some feedback it would be greatly appreciated...

also what aftermarket exhaust systems come with a catalytic converter? i thought all of them were cat back? or is the dealer screwing with me?

 

yowza 1100 for a new cat with install? sounds a little extreme...

if they find that it's fuxored i guess ill replace it somewhere else....

so the aftermarket cat (if it really is) shouldnt affect the rest of the recall then?

funny thing is they told me they want like 100 bucks for the cat inspection...i mean how different can cats be to where they need to charge me extra?

and they also said my car is now throwing CEL codes...how could it be throwing error codes while they're inspecting it when it was just fine when i dropped it off? the only complaint i had was rough idle and asked them to check the engine mounts....

anyone else has/had a similar problem?

 

That sounds fishy. My understanding is that the cat inspection consists of reading diagnostic data from the OBD. No matter what kind of cat is there, it's jist plug in and read the machine.

Something is also fishy about the original cat having been replaced before you got the car at 10,000 miles. Warranty on that is 80,000 miles. It's permissible to replace a cat with an aftermarket part, but there are standards for that. Somewhere on EPA's web site there is a page describing it. (Don't remember the URL, but it came up in a thread discussing penalties for removing or tampering with cats.) If the one on your car is legit, it should be covered by a warranty, but I don't know what the deal is if you don't have any records on it.

If it was me, I would not pay them the $100. I'd also tell them to just do whatever they're supposed to do on the recall. If they claim the cat or exhaust caused problems, the onus is on them to prove those parts don't meet Mazda specs and did any harm.

Ken

 

i'm gonna take a peak under their cars on the lot and try to compare it to mine...

i am also very surprised its been replaced and find it hard to believe....

i'll be going there tomorrow and hopefully not to find out i'm getting shafted...im gonna bring the printouts of the recall too...to be continued...

 

It would be quite unusual to replace the stock cat, and relatively expensive if the only other modification is cat-back exhaust.