Had to change catalytic converter 3 times!

[Stanl3yX]

Man this is the 3rd time I had to change my catalytic converter in the last 4 years. The plugs, coils and housing have had to be replaced too. I have a 2.4L, 2000 with about 115K. Does anyone have any experience or knows if there is some kind of press bulletin that explains what keeps causin it to go bad?

[Nate's Alero]

Man this is the 3rd time I had to change my catalytic converter in the last 4 years. The plugs, coils and housing have had to be replaced too. I have a 2.4L, 2000 with about 115K. Does anyone have any experience or knows if there is some kind of press bulletin that explains what keeps causin it to go bad?

maybe the way you drive?

[cherrington17]

Ur cat just gets clogged from crap in ur exhaust...afaik

[Nate's Alero]

Ur cat just gets clogged from crap in ur exhaust...afaik

yeah, but the coils and plugs, bad gas maybe??

[jayson_waltz]

yea there is something more wrong there. mine has 108,000 on the stock cat, i've owned the car for 4 years and nothing has changed on the exhaust except a lil louder cause my muffler is rotting out. but the cat i can tell is stock.

[AlbinoMonkeyRat]

I just changed my cat about 400 miles ago. I was misfiring, so it was dumping gas right into the exhaust and clogging the cat. get the ignition and spark stuff checked out.

[misslindseysue]

The best way to kill a cat, so to speak, is misfire. Raw fuel that gets past your combustion chamber will make its way back through the exhaust system and literally explode on the hot catalyst brick. This is bad, as you can imagine. It only takes a few minutes of bad misfire to crack a brick or at least destroy all of the active catalyst sites, which will then become clogged with everything else that comes through.

[Stanl3yX]

is there any extra inspection i should tell my mechanic about? should i be using premium gas? could this have anything to do with the ignition control module or leaky gaskets?

[cherrington17]

unless you upgraded your pcm... DO NOT run premium.

[comanche]

Maybe your mechanic likes to replace converters? Have you had a second opinion?

[Redog]

You didn't pay for it did you?

8 years 80K under EPA requirements

[AlbinoMonkeyRat]

You didn't pay for it did you?

8 years 80K under EPA requirements
wow, my stock one failed at 9 years old and 83k. just a tad longer than the minimum. they know what they're doing lol

[shonky_alero]

sounds like theres more wrong than just the cat to me. ive had my stock cat for about eight years now and its still good. now that I just said that im going to go to work and my cat is going to clog

[zzyzzx]

I still have my stock cat on my 1995 Escort, which has about 176,000 miles on it. I agree with misslindseysue. You need to treat the problem instead of the symptom.