> Victims often have to shell out $500 to $3k+ to fix the damage.
Their estimates for the value of the precious metals seems high. It also doesn’t make sense that their floor for the value of the precious metals is $595 but the floor for the replacement cost of an entire catalytic converter is $500.
There are numerous catalytic converters for sale on Amazon around the $100 price point. If there’s $500 of rare metals inside, I think I’ll supplement my tech job and do a bunch of drop shipping from Amazon to a scrap metal place someplace.
The aftermarket units you see on Amazon skimp out on materials so they have lower purchase prices. They may have significantly less or sometimes zero catalytic material. While these wouldn't fool EPA inspectors hooking test equipment up to a vehicle coming right off of Ford's production line, they'll likely pass a visual inspection by your local Jiffy Lube.
If you’re trying to defeat them, a simple RC or other timer circuit on the signal pins and enough current flow on the other pins to stand in for the heater (if equipped) will result in the ECU concluding everything is fine. Presumably someone trying to work around a catalytic converter issue would be more likely than average to fall into this category.
Most workarounds you see on the market are patched ECU firmware to fib a scaled second O2 sensor value based on the first, so all of the diagnostic tests keep running.
You’re seeing cars fail smog with these workarounds because states like California have started checking calibration IDs against the manufacturer’s listed values at the time of production.
Justification was diminishing returns as the distribution of cars on the road has naturally changed and eliminated many problems.
Instead out of "fairness" or greed, they'd require everyone to get every car tested every X years after Y years of age when sampling would make a lot more sense.
Save money and future proof yourself from further thefts.
Source I am a backyard mechanic who doesn't feel the need to be condescending to those who aren't.
Why would they go out of their way to commit a felony that's much more likely to get caught than just buying the catalyst at half price to drop off at the scrap yard later? Also there's tons of vehicles that have been driven on a misfire for too long, improper mixture, coolant contamination, etc that can reduce the efficiency of a catalytic converter but not be immediately obvious. If a garage is doing this dozens of times there's going to be a bad catalytic converter that trips a P0420 300 miles down the road and any mechanic looking at it is going to know what happened after a quick chat with the owner. There's no way they'd get away with it long term, people are already distrustful of mechanics so being charged for a new cat and getting franken cat bolted on is going to get the cops involved sooner or later.
> while soccer mom means you pay a premium for a new part and pay someone to install it.
"soccer mom" is generally not a compliment.