Howdy, I don't know much about cars so if I sound like an idiot feel free to laugh at me. I've also spent a couple of hours on these forums reading everyones debate about exhaust options but I'm curious what you all will advise me to do.

I have a 2004 coupe with 106k, service engine soon light popped on so I brought it to the dealership to get a code reading, came back catalyst failure bank 2 - driver side cat is bad. Of course they estimated $1,300 w/labor so I brought it to a friend of a friend that said both cat's are bad and the mufflers and he recommended I replace the cat's and get a cat back system. I'm not going to keep this car forever, maybe only 2-3 years so I'm hung up because of all the options I keep reading about.

I don't want to go with an option thats going to keep me having to do work on the exhaust over the next few years, so with that in mind what would you do with it?

I would appreciate any serious advice...

 

Really depends on whether you want to tolerate the SES light or not.

Any other side effects?

 

Gas mileage seems off but nothing else yet.

 

Wow! $1300 to replace one cat. What an insult. Dont ever go back to that dealership.

As for your cats both going bad @ ~100K miles. That makes me suspicious that there may be something causing it. They shouldn't go bad that soon. It makes me wonder if you possibly have excessive oil consumption.

Do you ever notice any smoke coming out of the exhaust?

Excessive oil consumption can cause the cats to fail early.

 

No there isn't any smoke coming out.

The dealership actually took about 45 minutes to look at the exhaust and came back telling me it was just the one cat that was bad.

This other guy I brought it to barely looked at them, he just tested them by knocking on them to hear the sound they made so theres a good chance he's wrong.

I'm going to find out for sure on Monday what exactly needs to be replaced and what doesn't.

If it's just the one cat and I wanted to switch to your ART pipes, I would removed both the cats and replace with the pipes or are the cats still part of that system just sold separately?

 

Art pipes $585 more power one cat $1300 same power hmmm just buy the art nothing to loose. But catalyst bank 2 is usually the 02 sensor but buy the pipes first then clear the light see what happens

 

If you want ART pipes and can deal with emissions (not sure on TX law, but surely it isn't as harsh as cali) just go with that and problem solved and you got more power.

 

If I buy the pipes I can ditch the cats, is there any cutting and welding needed done?

Has anyone passed emissions tests with the pipes before? How much longer than the HFC's do they last?

 

My CEL light came on about a year ago for one of my cats. I reset it and noticed it never came back on. The only time I see it turn on is when there is some serious rain outside and I drive through a puddle (being quiet low i assume the cat and o2 sensor gets soaked and malfunctions). I just park the car on an incline to make sure any excess water comes out and reset the light the next morning. It might be something as simple as this for you. Give it a go. Resetting the light is much cheaper than a new cat afterall.

 

I hope so man but yours sounds like a unique situation. I've gotten 2 opinions, one was half assed and the other was a dealership. Today I'll get a 3rd.

If theres one great gain out of this whole situation it was me finding this forum. I've spent about 10 hours reading on here in the last few days

 

Or I can sell you my stock cats for $1300 so I can buy full exhaust lol

 

The only modifications you will need to do with ART pipes is to trim down the heat shield studs so that they dont hit the pipes. Aside from that, ART pipes are a direct replacement for your OEM cats.

 

Update: The SES light didn't come back on after a week and about 200 miles so I took it to get an emissions state inspection and it passed. Seems to just be a bad sensor I guess. I'm not going to worry about it now but I did find out that the previous owner decline repairs on a bad catalyst code back in Feb 2010 so this car has had this happen before. Interesting.

Thank you to those that gave some input, much appreciated.