My car has 196,000 miles and it looks to be the stock converter. When is the routine replacement needed?

 

when it goes bad.

glowing red at nite, hearing noise coming from it.

 

According to midas cats should be replaced every 60K.

 

That's because Midas wants to sell you one.

 

Exactly.

 

that's what i figured. I just replace mine when they start making noises or stink like sulfur.

 

usualy 9 lives...

legally, you cannot replace ur cat until it has had over 60k miles on it.. (federal law) which is probably why Midas says that...

 

My dad is semi-retired but still works part time for a Chrysler dealer. Their stats which they foreward to the manufacturer say about 80% fail bet. 85-100k miles. The other 20% fail because some heavy handed son of a ***** hammers an exhaust system together and damages it. Interesting thing I found out is that the EPA mandates all aftermarket cats carry a lifetime warranty.

 

I've got one on my TA that is 16 years old, and a siamese that is 17½ years old. Both are still working fine, but the siamese does make soem noise and odors once in a while...

A good cat can last almost indefinitely if it has not been abused. If the engine has never been run rich for extended periods, if the air injection is working correctly, if the vehicle gets periodic longer trips that allow full heating (and drying) of the exhaust system, and if no fuel contamination has occurred, the cat can still be effective in reducing CO and HCs. Granted, a new one will do better, but you can still meet emissions limits with an older one.

As for the 60K "limitation", you CAN change your cat converters any time you want. However, under federal mandate the manufacturer is responsible for the emissions system for the first 60K miles. When our cars were built, the limit was 50K miles.

 

I'm at 77K miles, and my cat is definately dead. mmmmm, gotta love that smell.

 

Both the Catco cat I got to put on the Camaro, and the Walker I got to put on my '84 full-size van that wouldn't pass emissions, had a card in it that said things to the effect of, "Catalytic converters normally don't wear out", then had a bunch of stuff to fill out to indicate why it was being replaced. When I took the factory cat off of the van (~125k), though, it was an empty shell.

If it isn't plugging the exhaust flow, and is catalyzing, then it doesn't need to be replaced. Unless, of course, you want it to flow more...

 

Usually a replacement is because of a rich condition that overheated the original. Putting a new one on and that one will be toast in short order if the rich condition isn't fixed...

And it doesn't take too much extra fuel to kill them...