Joining the stolen Catalytic Converter Club YAY

Your situation is exactly what the governor and your state representatives need to hear about. And they need to hear it often! Too many clean burning older Prius are being lost for good due to these thefts and the state's unhelpful smog requirements need to be updated to handle this situation.

It sounds like you have a great car and parting a car out is a messy nightmare unless you're already in that line of work and are well equipped to move parts quickly.

If I were you I'd find a friend out of state to have a $120 aftermarket cat shipped to and then buy a new O2 sensor and put that on for the next 7 months and then re-evaluate the situation in September. With the amount of Cat thefts going on in California and both the expense and challenge of OEM replacement, the state might finally come up with a way to mitigate the amount of older low-pollution vehicles that are permanently taken out of service for these felony crimes.

In the meantime call your legislature and demand they help you and all the other crime victims rather then looking the other way as Toyota stealerships rob everyone a second time just to get their car back on the road.

 

Third party cat will not defacto trigger a code.

 

A well-made and properly installed third party cat will not trigger the light.

However, this is not really the problem.

The problem is that when that California smog check is performed, the test station will jack up the car to do a visual inspection to make certain that nobody has installed a third party cat on the car, because the letter of the law says it has to be a genuine Toyota replacement part.

 

Yeah, never know if the tester got busted by the state last month and felt the heat, or if they're just quizzing the cars' computers and calling it good so they can get a few more charges through per day.

Even if you get the 3rd party cat there, it can be a challenge to get it installed. All California car-repair facilities are theoretically barred from doing it. A welding shop would have the tools, and wouldn't have that liability since they aren't in the car-repair business.

 

Maybe take a couple vacations to Las Vegas? First vacation you find a place to ship your order to and second vacation you get it installed?

 

Regarding calling your state representatives and Governor:

I heard one good suggestion from a blogger: Tell your state representatives that Toyota needs to issue a recall for these cars. Toyota could easily install a tilt alarm. I hear that it can be hooked up to the car's door alarm. So the car will start honking anytime the car gets tilted after you park it. The thieves only need to jack it up 4 inches to get their saws under the car. A good tilt sensor will detect that.
Toyota is making a fortune off of replacing stolen catalytic converters with brand new ones. They will not install these tilt alarms because it will interfere with this new boom in income. It will take government action to force them to install this feature through recalls, and on new cars.

 

Update?

 

Did you end up just going with an aftermarket unit until the next smog? Which did you use? Where did you get it installed?

 

Glad it worked out for you!
Let us know how the 'smog check' goes in Sept.....

 

That's not true. The law in California says it has to be a CARB compliant catalytic converter on all 2001 and newer vehicles, whether it's OEM or aftermarket. The problem is that nobody makes a CARB compliant aftermarket catalytic converter because it would likely be just as expensive, if not more, than an OEM cat.

The dealers might be making a fortune, but I'm not so sure Toyota is. Thieves look for Toyota catalytic converters because they have at least $1,000 worth of expensive metals in them, Seems like somewhere I saw it was closer to $1,200. Non-CARB compliant catalytic converters have a mear fraction of that amount of precious metals which is why they are so cheap. Add all that expensive metal plus manufacturing costs plus shipping costs and it could cost some $1,500 or more for Toyota to make these and still not make any profit. How much Toyota sells these to the dealers is unknown to me. But seeing how some dealers sell them for as little as $1,500 would seem like Toyota isn't charging any more than that.

Meanwhile other dealers sell them for over $2,000... obviously a $500 mark up. Add to that $500 mark up their labor costs and now you see the dealers are the ones making all the money. At least the ones that charge those kinds of prices.

 

Revenge of Prius! Cat thief got killed by Prius in Anaheim, CA

 

No cat thefts here in Florida that I know of. Why does it seem like all the cat thefts occur in California and Oregon

 

Karma police, if not the real police are out to get 'em.

Here in So Cal Anaheim (not too far off from Disneyland), some thief got crushed when his jack failed and the Prius piled on him.

Santa Clarita and San Bernardino, these POS are being popped for running rings of thefts. As much as I deplore the loss of life (most especially a wasted one), I hate hearing all the suffering people have been going through with COVID and not having $$ to pay housing/bills, only to get screwed when these opportunists kick us while we're down.

Wishing I engraved my license plate on my cat because that would have been a sweet recovery. And let's face it, if there's $ to be made in it, the government will go after them. Just look at the bust pics and piles of cash. More for their coffers/war chest.