Our practical experience would be that the Toyota catalytic converters are definitely and tremendously superior to the aftermarket catalytic converters.
They cleanup the pollution levels far more aggressively right out of the box, plus they commonly last from 5 to 10 times as long.
The newest aftermarket cats we have had opportunity exam have passed the emissions test by way of the thinnest of margins, where the Toyota catalytic converter would have effortlessly passed with room to spare.
Catalytic Converter
The Toyota cats operate considerably cleaner on abrupt accelerations as well. We have evaluated the emissions of Toyotas with brand-new Toyota catalytic converters on repetitive back-to-back snap accelerations (which results in producing maximum emissions) and the outcome continues to be that we see a high of only 50 to 60 parts per million of unburned hydrocarbons (HC). Performing exactly the same test on brand-new aftermarket cats has generated hydrocarbon readings as much as 1700 to 2000 parts per million.
As for endurance, again and again we have seen those who have substituted their cats with aftermarket cats get stuck in a cycle in which there after they must change the catalytic converter every 2 years just making it through DEQ.
An additional downside to aftermarket cats is the fact that to be able to install the “universal” cat, the muffler shop will cut an area out from the original piping to be able to weld in the non-Toyota cat.
At that time, should the owner ever gets frustrated with needing to replace the cat again and again and wishes to go back to a Toyota cat, he must spend even a lot more than he would have, since he now has to restore the piping on each side of the catalytic converter to be able to restore the bolt-up flanges which have been cut off.
We had been recently talking about cat expenses with a Tundra owner and had occasion to calculate the expense per mile of one of Toyota’s most costly catalytic converters. In this situation, the price figured out to around 1 ¾ cents per mile. It had made it through 150,000 miles. Models with less costly cats typically work out to less than half a cent per mile.
If the aftermarket cat this individual was contemplating were to fail inside a year-which is not really uncommon-then it would cost about 5 cents per mile if it survived 15,000 miles. That is certainly getting close to Three times the cost per mile. (Ok, it’s 2.857 times the cost per mile.)
Even though groing through this with the customer, she pointed out that a muffler shop had informed her that they were utilizing an Original equipment manufacturer part that will be the very same as the Toyota part because theoretically OEM meant that it had been produced by the original manufacturer for Toyota. What OEM or Original Equipment Manufacturer actually means is that this organization at some point has provided some type of part for Toyota-could be anything at all, might be a gasket. What it doesn’t imply is that they supplied the catalytic converters. If they had supplied the cats, they actually would not be marketing generic cats that required chopping the previous ones out and welding the new ones in.
As far as Catalytic converter breakdowns go, they are able to fail in several ways and from numerous causes. Most often, their capability to clean up emissions at some point basically dies out out and so they either don’t succeed the DEQ emissions check, or, for more recent vehicles that monitor the converters, the computer are able to turn on the check engine light and will set a code saying “catalyst effectiveness below threshold.”
In case your engine is persistantly burning oil, it has a tendency to leave crusty build up on the cat making it effectively inert. If those deposits continue on for enough time, at some point it plugs up the cat so you experience a serious decrease of power, for the reason that exhaust can exit rapidly enough allowing the engine to take the quantities of air it requires for power.
Operating the car having a cylinder misfiring leads to the cat to get too hot simply because it ignites all of the unburned fuel to burn within the cat itself. In this instance, it could function so hot the catalytic converter material disintegrates. This may lead to chunks of material getting stuck within the exhaust system in a manner that plugs up the exhaust to cause significant decrease of power. An additional manner in which the catalytic material can be broken up is that if something hits the outside the cat hard enough.
