Well it happened! I parked ChuggyPyg in her usual place at about 10 last night, temps 0ºF (!!!) and this morning at 07:30 when I started her up, she was making the most God-awful racket, just like those roaring Hondas and other rice-boxes I'm always seeing (and hearing!) around here in the NorthEast. I thought it might have been the extreme cold and ChuggyPyg had caught a chill, so I headed off to the stealership, and sure enough some low-life scum had nicked poor ChuggyPyg's catalytic converter! Curiously enough, three cars ahead of me in the queue at the stealership, there was another Gen 2 Prius, same colour, making the same loud farting when it was running. (What are the chances? I thought…) …but not only had the same thing happened to his Prius, but he lives in the same apartment complex as me!!!!!! So, I called my insurance company, and the police, and did all the paperwork, and looked on-line for more info. and came up with three suggestions: (1) keep the car in the garage (2) paint the replacement cat some garish colour (3) have the stealership engrave the VIN on the replacement. I'm doing #3, and also having them fit a security shield (see Amazon) which makes the cat removal more awkward and slow! Ah well, only in America! Happy New Year everyone!
Welcome to the club... I had mine reinforced with steel rebar rods, welded to the pipe in-between the two cats. And a tag weld to the bolt heads and thread. If you ever want to remove the flange (which will most likely never going to happen as it will survive the rest of the car...) then just cut the bolts and buy new ones for a few cents. This was advised by my insurance together with the repair shop. I was fully covered, even though I didn't have all-risk insurance. Lucky me. The welding and material was free of charge. I also bought the plate you mention, they recommend me not to use it because of plastic parts combined with trapped heat from the converter (the plate can isolate the heat and melt or catch fire). So I respected the insurance advise and went for the rebar option. Has been over one year and still got the same pipe
Only in America would anyone SAY something stupid like that in a situation like this. Are you serious ??????
Hoo boy, only Sam Spade would denigrate WilDavis' off the cuff remark making light of his own situation.
Seriously stupid! Obviously to anybody who has known me since …as I think I've explained before, I came to USA in 1983, as part of a joint attempt by UK and US Governments to raise the IQ of both countries (BTW the experiment failed… …miserably! )
This has me thinking that the sign of your IQ must have changed somewhere during your Atlantic passage. How did they pull that off?
To be honest I have no idea! Whenever intelligence was mentioned, I remember being led to understand that in my case there was never any sign whatever!
Insurance covered it, but used an aftermarket cat (something about "betterment"), so the bottom line was that I ended up paying $500 (which included $100 deductible), and the insurance paid for the security plate (see pic) and the installation thereof!
Interesting - the security-plate I used has no plastic parts, is all metal including the fixtures! (see pic I posted)
It's gotta be a bit frustrating: your OEM cat is stolen, and now the cheap aftermarket cat has a shield. Ah well.
