Should I remove my cats before thiefs do?

One member here has stated they got over $1300 for it! I don't recall from whom tho'.

 

If you some decent DIY ability, you can do it yourself with a $130 aftermarket cat assembly. Ebay takes ~10% from any auctions and PayPal takes ~3% also. I did 7 cars for family and friends. Sold a couple on ebay and then made contact with a scrap dealer in Texas. If you can't find someone local to you that will pay a fair price, I can provide you with his contact info, assuming the 'conversation' portion of the forum starts working again.

 

If your car is not parked in a secure location than adding some shielding would be wise and you'll pollute less if you keep your Cat. However, many shops can sell a gen2 cat to their scrap metal buyer for $1K and pay a $200 bounty to you if you bring your car in. Less savvy shops are deducting $200 from $500 swap. And as @TMR-JWAP says, you can unbolt and saw it out and replace it yourself and sell on line from more than $1K.

 

Have you had any issues with 420 error code coming up with those aftermarket Cats? I installed one I got on Ebay for $130 and after 100 miles 420 code came back and I'm pretty sure it was a sketchy looking O2 sensor, but will never find out because dude hit a patch of ice and totaled his Prius day after he finally got his car back.

 

My 2007 has the most miles (about 4500) since the swaps. None have coded.

 

@edthefox5 was the one who mentioned he sold it on ebay for $1300+. After reading that, I had the same thought and swapped mine out for an aftermarket - sold it on ebay with a buy now price for $1200 and it sold within hours. No codes, no negative impact on mileage so far. I'm pretty sure i could've squeezed $1400 out of it given the increasing price of the metals. Hope that helps.

 

Like it.

They have to weld a big adapter on the new one to mate with the resonator so these jerks should see that and go wait a second whats that and see it has no dual model numbers and split......fingers crossed. meanwhile you stick a grand in your pocket like you stole it before they did.

 

Thanks you! I sure appreciate any info on aftermarket cat quality, both how long they last and what actual emissions do they get (emissions test).

Personally I'd love to save money and swap my non-functioning cat for an aftermarket one but am leaning towards an OEM simply because I'm not sold on aftermarket quality. It seems like all the info I can find on aftermarket cats for Gen 2 Prii is "it must work because I put it on yesterday and the CEL hasn't come on since" and that's not quite what I call, convincing.

 

I suspect thieves aren't that perceptive especially at night in the dark... I'd recommend spending a $100 on a cat shield to avoid future hassles if you have to park your car in public places over night often.

 

Don't forget, there are many 'levels of quality' for aftermarket converters. My reasoning behind swapping was that I didn't want to come out of a store one day and find my car damaged due to a lowlife stealing the converter. To me, the best way to prevent that from happening was to install a low value CC that uses a clamp, making it obvious it's not OEM. You can't get much lower value than a $130 ebay CC, lol. The bonus was selling the OEM converters. I feel pretty confident even a cheap CC replacement would keep the cars emissions tolerable. Maybe not 100% as clean as OEM for every possible operating scenario, but at least comparable to or better than most any other ICE vehicle. Along those lines, my 2007 currently has 204k miles. Although it didn't have the P0420 code, how do I know for sure after 199k miles, that the new $130 converter isn't possibly doing a better job? I guess time will tell the tale....

 

And that works for a lot of people, and I can respect that. Just thinking about the alternative of having your OEM cat stolen makes me cringe. Our cars are so old that even if they had comprehensive insurance coverage there's a chance the insurance company would consider the car "totaled" after a stolen cat.

But for me personally I didn't buy my Toyota hybrids to get emissions comparable to most any other ICE vehicle. So as a result I've sold my soul to the OEM.

I guess it all depends on what you bought the car for. I've known of Prius owners that don't even have a working cat and don't care either. Any working cat is better than no cat.

 

Who did you use to ship your OEM Cat to the person that purchased it from you- UPS, FedEx, USPS?
How much did you pay for shipping?

 

Just as a funny side note to this topic, I had my '08 at the dealer the other day, and their trade-in offer was $1000. I looked the guy square in the eye and told him, "I could cut out the catalytic converter and sell it for $1200, then drive the rest to the junkyard and get $300. Your offer is insulting."

 

Nice egg........like it...

 

Did you use the old 'GASKET' or put a new gasket on the after market Cat?

 

I didn't like the look of the cheap flange gasket the $130 Cat came with and used a different one...

 

The donut that came with my $129 cat was half the size of the OEM donut and would not have worked not even close.

My OEM donut was in good shape so reused it. I had bought a brand new preemptive donut from the dealer in case mine was bad
upon dismantle.

Mine turned out was fine so was able to reuse it. But no rust under my car. Cat looked really clean too may be why mine went so high.
Car is garaged so chassis looks good.

I returned my OEM donut. Was $86.

 

Shopping for those donuts online is madness... So often the $15 ones seemed better than the $85 ones and there doesn't really seem to be a standard, nor exact measurements. One ebay seller sent me the smaller flange for the muffler.

Ultimately I was concerned with the new flange gasket I got because the old cat was so clogged that engine ran rough until the seal of the gasket started to fail after 5 minutes. So when I put in the cheap cat I cleaned and re-used this gasket with high temp gasket sealant and made a mistake and used too much sealant and car smelled like burning plastic until all the excess sealant burned off.

I won't make that mistake again!

 

Of the dozen Gen 2 cats I bought on ebay, only the last one actually came with a donut almost identical to the OEM and actually had the correct bolts/springs. Most have a set of Dodge/Chrysler bolts, where the threaded section is smaller diameter, passes through the OEM threaded hole and they expect you to put a nut on the other side. Absolutely ridiculous.

This is the one I purchased last. Visually, I like it better than any others I've purchased. I have not installed it yet, but I think I'll put it on my car when I get the chance, just to test it. I purchased mine from a seller on ebay for about 20 less than the price in the link. I googled the sku info from the box and came across this website.

YITAMOTOR Catalytic Converter For 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Toyota – YITAMotor