Hello everyone. I'm concerned with the cat theft problem in my area.. It seems like I see instagram stories of cats being stolen off suvs/truck/priuses almost once per week. My idea is that instead of getting a shield because theres been some that cut through the shield and that leads to even further damage of the car, I would replace my oem cats with aftermarket units, and take out the heat exchanger in favor for a straight pipe+ rerouting the coolant pipes into each other. This way when thefts come to scope the car they will see the heat exchanger gone /welded new cats and dont target my car anymore. If someone were to steal and sell my cat. I might as well sell it myself and use the money somewhere else. Did anyone else have this idea? Or am I just being silly?
Many have done what you're doing. Sell the original cat from you car and installing an aftermarket cat (which is normally inferior)
Removing the heat exchange would not be good for engine warmup times and MPG, right? I mean like JC said, you can do it. Many have, your car, your choice.
So in Orange county North Carolina I don't have emissions My check engine light can be on in the car and I pass safety inspection only and I'm legal sticker on the plate and everything no meeting small officials no waivers nothing so I'm guessing in my neck of the woods I could just whack out the converter the lower one the one that everybody wants and replace that with if you say it's inferior the three to 5,000 lb little cat that you buy it all the auto parts stores it's certified legal in every state except California because it's not made by the car's manufacturer when it's on the car it'll still put out what you need in California out the tailpipe it's just not made by the manufacturer of the car and that is seemingly where the holdup is for you folks That's why I don't be around there. And I don't think the cat lights are the PO420 or whatever it is has anything to do with cat quality per se I find that hard to believe because all the other 49 states are just not going to be susceptible to being having a light on because they don't have a California approved cat that even sounds reet. Or put on this so-called cheaper no good cat and put Corolla upper and lower O2 sensors in and see what happens The computer may not be as tight with those I don't know. I do know in my '02 Corolla when AC Delco was allowed to build the computer they screwed it up bad and the firmware in the car's computer had the O2 sensors so tightly regulated that the light would come on almost after 40,000 miles the rest of the car's life. The answer to that problem was $170 reflash of the firmware that Toyota wanted to charge all Corolla owners I never opted for that or when I found out about it the car had almost 300,000 miles and just didn't really matter at that point
California allows aftermarket catalytic converters that have been proven to be meet the same emissions & durability standards as original equipment ( Aftermarket Catalytic Converters | California Air Resources Board ). Toyota's cats, especially on hybrids with frequent engine starts & stops, are made to extremely strict standards and contain roughly 2 grams each of platinum, palladium, and rhodium. At today's prices, that amount of precious metal is worth about $50, $130, and $1,300 respectively so any new aftermarket cat that costs less than $1500 obviously does not contain the same materials. One of the cheaper ways of preventing cat theft is to have a muffler shop weld 1/4" rod to the exhaust pipes before & after the cat. This makes it much, much harder to cut with a sawzall Catalytic convert shields are good visual deterrents, but they wouldn't take much longer to cut (especially the aluminum ones).
I wrapped the rear cut zone on ours with chain, put bolt/nuts on every turn or two, and used permanent thread lock on the two outermost. Doesn’t rattle, forget it’s even there, and “maybe” will deter them.
I'm looking for an aftermarket cat as well after an attempted theft where the pipe leading into the cat was cut. Since I have to get this fixed I'm thinking to just swap to an aftermarket one. I live in IL so I can get whatever. Any luck identifying an aftermarket cat that is well reviewed and won't cause codes to be thrown? Found this one on Amazon but very few reviews: Catalytic Converter Replacement for 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Toyota Prius 1.8L Direct-Fit High Flow Series Replaces 16649 (EPA Compliant) https://a.co/d/h9dJQtL I only found these
Definitely report it to the cops also, they never try to find the purps. That will make their jobs easier.
