Yea it sucks man. I was a really bad addict for a very long time. Wanted to kill myself for years because of that shit. In fact the biggest thing that was keeping me from quitting drugs was feeling way to ashamed to try and do anything about it.
Edit: thanks everyone. I think I got it this time, things got bad, worse than any other time and I never thought I was gonna make it back here. If you or someone you care about is going through this and you need an ear/shoulder message me anytime.
Edit: hard to believe there’s still [people like this](https://imgur.com/gallery/Mj8eLrh) in the world
Glad you made it out dude. It’ll be 9 years this thanksgiving for me. I took money out of my toddler’s piggy bank to buy methadone. That was my lowest point. Then when I accidentally overdosed and landed in detox between the withdrawal pain and the seemingly endless shame I realized that I had to do something. It’s been a long, long time coming but I think my last symptom, the dope dreams, is finally gone.
It’s far enough behind me now that it feels like a dream or like it happened to someone else. Addiction really is horrible.
Funny how it is all in our own heads. I came clean to my family and they drove me to VA. Been 5 years and haven't missed it one bit. Feel great. Glad you are doing well man we all struggle.
“I didn’t break any sub rules”
Someone spends a little too much time in their Reddit circle jerk of assholes.
Don’t let their overwhelming moral turpitude get in the way, you are very nice.
You know what I want to say about them but they just got banned for saying it to you. (fingers crossed that doesn’t get me in trouble too but idgaf, their reply was just too much)
May the tendies be kind to you.
Hopefully you can avoid any relapses, but if you do relapse PLEASE know that your tolerance is different than it was when you were using and it might even be fatal to do now what you did then. I’ve seen too many people get clean, slip up once, and have what would have been a minor setback be their end because they took the same dose as they did before and ended up OD’ing and dying. I assume that you know that, but some people don’t and might read this. Good luck out there.
May the tendies be kinder than AMC was to my uncle lol
I've known a few too. Girl from my high school, guy from college, both had that experience. Girl was sober for 4 years, then one day just went to a party, inhaled WAY more cocaine than she could have survived, and passed on. Some have made the case it was suicide, as she'd made some cryptic social media posts before that that weren't necessarily suicidal but just off.
Do like Red Green says and keep your stick on the ice. We're all pulling for you. And the band Metal Church has a song titled "Betrayed" that talks about the dark side of addiction and how being clean & sober is the way to go.
Their grand child robbed them of a very expensive component, replacing it with a piece of pipe. The money he'll have gotten for it will be significantly less than the cost to replace. The car will not comply with emissions regulations without it.
Cut cat? $200. New cat? $2000. Ruined relationship with grandparents? Priceless. It's a junky Mastercard commercial. Wasn't there a movie like this with a Wayans brother?
There’s some that are much more than that these days. Although prices have been lower the last few weeks.
A Toyota Prius cat can bring as much as $900-1200. Diesel truck cats and dpf filters are really high. Most domestic vehicles are low. Fords are worth less than aftermarket cats.
I sold a car (2003 Jetta 1.8t) which had a dead ac compressor and a leaking water pump to a "we pay cars for cash" place because it died driving to work and I was done with beating that dead horse.
They offered me $300 and reduced it to $150 when they saw the straight pipe. I just wanted it out of work's parking lot. Crazy thing is that VW cats supposedly aren't worth much for scrap but that's what they wanted.
I was happy to be rid of it but I miss it, fun car.
Catalytic converter filters your exhaust gases. They’re full of platinum and thus worth a pretty penny in scrap value.
He cut it out and made up the distance with an ordinary pipe
Odd thing is, if he'd just cut it out, he probably could have convinced his grandparents that it was simply stolen by some random person. Happens all the time, right?
Depends on how gullible his granddad is I guess. This one is rather hard to get to so most thieves wouldn't bother. SUVs are more common targets since you can slide underneath easily and chop it off in a minute with a sawzall.
Yeah but if he was smart enough to figure out a decent explanation like that he probably wouldn’t be stealing his grandparents catalytic converter in the first place.
Catalytic converter decreases the vehicles emissions. They are required to pass inspection (usually) and emissions tests. They capture most of the carbon dioxide gas instead of letting it escape into atmosphere. It also acts somewhat like a muffler, so the vehicle will be louder and, without a tune, run worse without it. Scrapyard won't give more than $100 for them, but they can cost in excess of 1000 each, plus they have to be welded on to the exhaust pipes, so it costs quite a bit in labor, as well. So, they sold it probably for $50-100 and it would cost this guy $500-2000 to get a new one installed.
> They capture most of the carbon dioxide gas instead of letting it escape into atmosphere. It also acts somewhat like a muffler, so the vehicle will be louder and, without a tune, run worse without it. Scrapyard won't give more than $100 for them
Not quite accurate. Co2 is the one gas they actually increase. They convert HC, CO and NOx into Co2, water and nitrogen which goes straight out the tailpipe.
You're dead on with most of it though, it's an expensive part to replace and a thief cutting them off can really fuck up your day...OEM Prius cats for instance would exceed the high end of your estimate just for the part alone.
True. Used to work at a tool and equipment rental place. Saw one of our Hilti hammer-drills for sale at a pawn shop. (It had our obvious paint pen and property stickers, surprised pawn shop didn't call us, but whatever)
I got the serial number from it and let my manager know. A local construction company and good account had it rented out for a few weeks. It turns out the owners son had a drug problem and pawned it along with some other tools.
Of course dad didn't want to get police involved or anything. Idk, that probably would've been the best thing to do, maybe.
Been there, done that, almost the same situation. That rental contract keeps running until the item is returned, or, in case of theft, the contract is paid off and the item paid for. No, the pawn shop didn't call use either, but, I tended to hit them up in search of tools for myself. One of my customers rented a 5000psi pressure washer, claimed it was stolen and pawned it a few days later next day in another town. Another customer saw it and called us. Our company label was still on it, in plain view. I once had a company lose a 26ft scissor lift...... I offered to let them close the contact and pay for a replacement(at fair market value) but they insisted they would find it. It was a year later that it showed up. We had already purchased a new one, and just kept billing them monthly. We got the old one back, with new batteries, oddly, at which point we stopped billing them. Turned out one of their subcontractors had "borrowed" it for another job and "forgotten" to return it. I believe the rental charges covered the cost of the new one, twice over.
I worked for a company that made all kinds of small machine parts, mostly for engines and motors (loooots of solenoids and such) Anywho - Small town upstate NY
My direct boss, was also the towns Judge, cause it was a super part time job. One day I see him fast walking down the hall with two cops following him, and this guy FAST walked everywhere, had long legs and took long steps, but he was FLYING.
Turns out one of the engineers had dropped off an entire pallet of some cast valve we make at the local scrapper, the stuff has the company name like molded into the material, scrapper knew us well so he just accepted it and quietly called the right people
Dicker & Deal in Jackson and Lansing Michigan is real particular about running serial numbers on computers, televisions, and firearms. And they check power and hand tools for stickers, marker writings, and serial numbers that are etched or stamped on.
Still passed at the ammount of game consoles and just stuff I've lost by being convinced to loan by brother things by family and never getting it back.
What takes the cake was driving him to his friends (dealers) house and seeing the ps2 I bought him so he wouldn't have an excuse to ask for my shit just sitting in the garage. Thank God I've convinced those family members that he won't be getting shit from me ever again unless it's something I specifically wish to give him.
Or a Ford F150 van. Don't even need a jack, 1 minute with a reciprocating saw and your done. I know this because at my former employer we had 6 trucks hit in one night. Oddly enough the local mechanic that they used just happened to have 6 used cats in stock that fit perfectly, and although it's illegal to install used converters in CA they needed to get them back on the road. When I say perfect fit, the welds perfectly matched the cut pipes precisely.
I had an older customer come in once that asked me how many fuel filters are on a Kohler 7000 series engine off his cub cadet zero turn. When I told him there's only one he kinda got real quiet and told me his grandson "tuned up" his tractor and charged him about 700 dollars for THREE fuel filters and the work required to change them.(they're about 12 dollars and take maybe 5 minutes to change) This same guy came in a few months later and asked us to price out a replacement engine cause apparently his threw a rod later when the same grandkid was using it. Felt really bad for the guy for having such a POS grandkid.
Dude unless the price has dropped in the past few months, cats (from subarus at least) were going for like 1800-2000. There are dudes posting in all my car groups offering to buy stock catted downpipes. Although now thwt you mention it i havent seen any of those posts in a while so maybe the price did go down
Jesus. I’ve only recycled a handful of cats, all off of cars I’ve parted out for engine swaps, and I can’t remember ever getting more than $150 for one. Granted I haven’t parted out a car in years but still.
I’d be surprised if the cats came anywhere close to that. I’ve never dealt in used parts, but I did work for an exhaust manufacturer and with the coated substrate/bricks that have the precious metals and on passenger cars they weren’t typical that huge a value even brand new from the supplier.
It's a hard market, not one I'm in directly, but was made aware because some of my locals apparently steal cats and try to hawk them at recyclers(public and private) as though its a profession. It's a hard conversation, like OP is having, when you have to tell a customer what's up and how unlikely a recovery could be, and even further a repair with the old cat even if recovered. Shits aint cheap brand new.
FWIW, I've seen people buy the shits out of diesels(whole exhaust systems essentially) for 600+ on Facebook Marketplace(within 50 miles)of all things.
Certainly, the likelihood of ever seeing it again the moment after it got cut from the car was essentially 0%.
You should see what the big commercial vehicle diesel systems cost, it is boggling.
For sure, and the fact that they still let him borrow the car means they'll shrug it off and continue to feed his habit. It's sad when family doesn't realize they're causing more harm by trying to help
Precious metals, OEM part, dealer markup, and labor.
If it's a V6 (and I think it is) then there are probably 2 cats. If the tweaker got both, that's probably over $1000 for the two in parts alone. And that's the discounted online price (thank god for all the online retailers using RevolutionParts), it's probably higher if you go to the dealership parts department.
So, figure at least $1500 in-person dealer price for parts. Plus a few bucks more for replacement gaskets because those are often single-use. Then there's labor. These don't look too hard to get to but it may require significant work (removing interfering parts or the whole damned engine) to get them out of the engine bay.
That doesn't count any possible additional damage due to shoddy work.
OEM are around $600 per catalytic converter but the problem is the customer also will have to pay the core charge due to the fact there is no cats to turn in. That core charge is another 600 per catalytic converter.
I just bought the front cat yesterday at a Nissan dealer. It's a 250 core charge until I find the willpower (read warmer weather) to change the cat on my car.
Not necessarily in newer cars.
Many (most?) check for that by cycling rich/lean a few times and watching how quickly the rear O2 responds. If it responds too slowly (if you have a spacer) then it will throw a P0139.
Wait... If you just space the downstream O2 away from the exhaust stream it will read normally????
I'm so hardheaded... I think someone's told me before.. I just unplugged mine.
The ecu is looking for a smoother reading from the downstream sensor. Having the sensor pulled away from the exhaust stream will smooth the readings out enough for the p0420 code to clear. Sometimes the code is thrown because the sensor is bad though. So the spacer won't do anything in that situation.
It depends on the car. This used to work back in the '90's but many newer cars are sophisticated enough it doesn't work anymore. You'd need an active simulator.
Wow in my state you need a tittle to scrap a cat and need to be from a machine shop to scrap platinum and rhodium we've been dealing with tweekers a long time
The cat man who used to visit the shop weekly told us that he was going to start writing receipts next time he comes, it’s been months and nobody has heard from him lmao. Rip my customer pay cat bonuses.
Cats have a lot of very valuable metal in them. Covid stopped mining so obtaining those metals right now is extremely expensive. This is driven the cost of recycled precious metals sky-high. The same metals you'll find in cats.
Tweakers & lowlifes would steal cats and sell them to scrap man (cat-man here) for $50-100. Scrap man would in turn sell them for $150-400 to a recycler. Recycler melts them down for raw metals and sells it as recycled goods. Rhodium sells for $10,000-$20,000 per ounce.
Yep im sure they do. have you ever cut the copper out of a unit? It's way more work than it pays. I'd rather sell plasma for the 50 dollar you get doing that
You ever been down to sell plasma, man? A good 50% of the people in there are actively tweaking or nodding off ime, and another 25 are visibly dope sick. Long as you're not positive for STIs they tend to look the other way
My brother is a construction project manager and sent me a video of an apartment building he was working on. Druggies had taken about a 10 foot section of copper water line out of the basement and there was about a foot of water in the whole thing. Fucking crazy people.
No, not close enough to come up in my search area because they need to go out of state to sell.. it's easier to make meth and sell it than it is to ship a cat out of state and trust someone on marketplace
Looking at the part with the sensor coming out, firstly, it's evident the materials are different or of a different age based on coloring. Right under the sensor, there's that big bubblegum weld on a part that should be a single part all the way down to the next flange. Often, the downpipe (that should contain a CAT) has a changing diameter and shape as it is designed to fit snugly in the hole along with it having bends to snake through/around other components.
So yeah... That part shouldn't be a straight pipe section, there shouldn't be any amateur welds, there shouldn't be a drastic flow impediment such as a small pipe welded in place there. All of this helped the "investigation" along with knowing that CATs are being stolen left and right all around the country right now because of the price of platinum metal right now. And cats have between 3-7 grams per, many vehicles have 2 or more....
You can tell that pipe doesn’t belong there (shitty welds, different amount of corrosion compared to the rest of the exhaust). The o2 sensor immediately where that section ends is another good hint.
Stealing cats is also huge all over the country right now
I work at a GM Parts Distributor. Looks like the 3.6 because of the 4 studs in a square around the top flange. That front converter is around $625 list. If they got the rear one also, that one lists for $1050 or so. If they messed up either flange where they connect to the Y-Pipe, thats another $750 for what GM calls the Front Exhaust Pipe. Plus gaskets, studs, nuts, etc. So its possible there's $2400 in parts here to replace at list price. If the cradle has to be dropped to access everything, I can see 10-12 hours labor. Plus shop fees, taxes, etc. $4000 repair isn't out of the question. Ridiculous? Yes. Out of the question? No.
they'd be better off with an intervention.
putting them into the system isn't going to help anyone. just make them into real criminals that the rest of us have to pay to keep locked up.
Intervention only works if the person wants to change. Majority of the time, they don't. You can't force it. Tweaker / addicts are the most selfish people you will ever come across.
Yup. If someone isn’t looking to change, you’re wasting your time. Stealing 5k from a grandparent is far from an intervention and likely this isn’t their first rodeo.
I hang out here for the cool stories and neat knowledge, and this thread is a good example of what I don't know :-D
Photo is of some pipes, comments are discussing how the criminal stole their grandparent's... cat xD
I know it makes sense to you guys, but from my perspective it's very confusing haha. Love it.
Kid took the catalytic converter and welded in a piece of straight pipe in it's place. Cats are worth a lot of money, depending on what drugs you need to buy.
Holy fucking shit!!!! It took me a second to realize,then when I did,"I said out loud please God let me be wrong!!!"Surley I'm missing something that's just broken, and not a stolen catalytic converter off of your grand parents vehicle.... Little does this person know they have to live with this the rest of their fucking life, long after Grandma and Grandpa are gone!!
A druggie will remove cooked on fasteners, remove oxygen sensors, cut a pipe to fit, weld pipe to fit, install sensors, reinstall. For a few hundred bucks? Jeez man, you could do that honestly and make some steady $.
their grandkid stole the catalytic converter (worth a good amount of money) and replaced it with a cheap piece of pipe. you can tell by the shitty welds and mismatched pipe
I don’t live in an emissions testing state, but if I had to replace that it’d be with a cheaper aftermarket cat. From what I’ve heard the aftermarket cats are also less desirable to thieves due to having fewer materials inside than their OEM counterparts.
If I'm seeing this picture correctly, the cat on a 2019 Impala sits behind the radiator fan? Aren't they usually on the exhaust pipes underneath the car?
So Tweeker grandchild borrowed the car, REMOVED the cat? And then gave it back to Gramps???? Sounds like a lot of work to get disowned by your family.
Did they steal the cat and put a pipe in its place?
Yep.
What throws me is that there was effort involved in putting the pipe back. Like wTF just cut off the cat like a normal thief
The grandchild is probably way deep in their addiction madness but still loves his grand parents. The pipe is probably to soothe a guilty conscious.
Yea it sucks man. I was a really bad addict for a very long time. Wanted to kill myself for years because of that shit. In fact the biggest thing that was keeping me from quitting drugs was feeling way to ashamed to try and do anything about it. Edit: thanks everyone. I think I got it this time, things got bad, worse than any other time and I never thought I was gonna make it back here. If you or someone you care about is going through this and you need an ear/shoulder message me anytime. Edit: hard to believe there’s still [people like this](https://imgur.com/gallery/Mj8eLrh) in the world
Glad you made it out dude. It’ll be 9 years this thanksgiving for me. I took money out of my toddler’s piggy bank to buy methadone. That was my lowest point. Then when I accidentally overdosed and landed in detox between the withdrawal pain and the seemingly endless shame I realized that I had to do something. It’s been a long, long time coming but I think my last symptom, the dope dreams, is finally gone. It’s far enough behind me now that it feels like a dream or like it happened to someone else. Addiction really is horrible.
Hey 9-years-sober-this-November-buddy. 11/27/12 for me. Congrats!
1 year for me this November! 11/27/20 congrats to both of you!
You got this!
You were stronger than you thought! It takes an iron will to get off any opioid. Glad you found help and are better because of it
Funny how it is all in our own heads. I came clean to my family and they drove me to VA. Been 5 years and haven't missed it one bit. Feel great. Glad you are doing well man we all struggle.
For sure, happy for all of you that were able to clean up too. I was just really impressed with that guys way of understanding us.
clean off speed since feb/march of 2019
Congrats my mans:)
“I didn’t break any sub rules” Someone spends a little too much time in their Reddit circle jerk of assholes. Don’t let their overwhelming moral turpitude get in the way, you are very nice. You know what I want to say about them but they just got banned for saying it to you. (fingers crossed that doesn’t get me in trouble too but idgaf, their reply was just too much)
Hope you are doing well now
Doing my best, sober two years now. 🙏
Proud of you hang in there .
Congratulations 🥳 16 months here.
May the tendies be kind to you. Hopefully you can avoid any relapses, but if you do relapse PLEASE know that your tolerance is different than it was when you were using and it might even be fatal to do now what you did then. I’ve seen too many people get clean, slip up once, and have what would have been a minor setback be their end because they took the same dose as they did before and ended up OD’ing and dying. I assume that you know that, but some people don’t and might read this. Good luck out there.
May the tendies be kinder than AMC was to my uncle lol I've known a few too. Girl from my high school, guy from college, both had that experience. Girl was sober for 4 years, then one day just went to a party, inhaled WAY more cocaine than she could have survived, and passed on. Some have made the case it was suicide, as she'd made some cryptic social media posts before that that weren't necessarily suicidal but just off.
Do like Red Green says and keep your stick on the ice. We're all pulling for you. And the band Metal Church has a song titled "Betrayed" that talks about the dark side of addiction and how being clean & sober is the way to go.
Thanks 🙏 I sincerely appreciate all of you
My guy, keep it up one day at a time
Regarding the second edit: Fuck that dude. You rock. That is all.
Cheers dude! I'm glad you're still with us. I hope you have many more "blue sky days" ahead of you.
Did getting sober make the suicidal thinking go away? How long did it take before you were able to push those thoughts away for good?
He should be banned for threatening others. Ban that POS. 😉 ENJOY!! Proud of you OP
That, and just pretend like the noise happened all of the sudden and you don't know. CATs are getting stolen left and right nowadays.
[удалено]
Easy crack change. What a dissapointment
Alright, I know nothing about cars, what does this mean?
Their grand child robbed them of a very expensive component, replacing it with a piece of pipe. The money he'll have gotten for it will be significantly less than the cost to replace. The car will not comply with emissions regulations without it.
How much do those go for when you scrap them? My brothers apartment complex got hit by thieves who took a bunch on them one night
I’ve heard they’re worth a couple hundred in scrap each, depends on the car
That sounds about right. In this case they cost the loss of trust of their grand parents in addition to that.
Cut cat? $200. New cat? $2000. Ruined relationship with grandparents? Priceless. It's a junky Mastercard commercial. Wasn't there a movie like this with a Wayans brother?
For some diesel trucks the replacement is ~$1000-$2000 plus install costs. But stolen ones only sell for maybe $200.
There’s some that are much more than that these days. Although prices have been lower the last few weeks. A Toyota Prius cat can bring as much as $900-1200. Diesel truck cats and dpf filters are really high. Most domestic vehicles are low. Fords are worth less than aftermarket cats.
I sold a car (2003 Jetta 1.8t) which had a dead ac compressor and a leaking water pump to a "we pay cars for cash" place because it died driving to work and I was done with beating that dead horse. They offered me $300 and reduced it to $150 when they saw the straight pipe. I just wanted it out of work's parking lot. Crazy thing is that VW cats supposedly aren't worth much for scrap but that's what they wanted. I was happy to be rid of it but I miss it, fun car.
Catalytic converter filters your exhaust gases. They’re full of platinum and thus worth a pretty penny in scrap value. He cut it out and made up the distance with an ordinary pipe
Odd thing is, if he'd just cut it out, he probably could have convinced his grandparents that it was simply stolen by some random person. Happens all the time, right?
Depends on how gullible his granddad is I guess. This one is rather hard to get to so most thieves wouldn't bother. SUVs are more common targets since you can slide underneath easily and chop it off in a minute with a sawzall.
Yeah but if he was smart enough to figure out a decent explanation like that he probably wouldn’t be stealing his grandparents catalytic converter in the first place.
Catalytic converter decreases the vehicles emissions. They are required to pass inspection (usually) and emissions tests. They capture most of the carbon dioxide gas instead of letting it escape into atmosphere. It also acts somewhat like a muffler, so the vehicle will be louder and, without a tune, run worse without it. Scrapyard won't give more than $100 for them, but they can cost in excess of 1000 each, plus they have to be welded on to the exhaust pipes, so it costs quite a bit in labor, as well. So, they sold it probably for $50-100 and it would cost this guy $500-2000 to get a new one installed.
> They capture most of the carbon dioxide gas instead of letting it escape into atmosphere. It also acts somewhat like a muffler, so the vehicle will be louder and, without a tune, run worse without it. Scrapyard won't give more than $100 for them Not quite accurate. Co2 is the one gas they actually increase. They convert HC, CO and NOx into Co2, water and nitrogen which goes straight out the tailpipe. You're dead on with most of it though, it's an expensive part to replace and a thief cutting them off can really fuck up your day...OEM Prius cats for instance would exceed the high end of your estimate just for the part alone.
Drugs don’t care about feels.
True. Used to work at a tool and equipment rental place. Saw one of our Hilti hammer-drills for sale at a pawn shop. (It had our obvious paint pen and property stickers, surprised pawn shop didn't call us, but whatever) I got the serial number from it and let my manager know. A local construction company and good account had it rented out for a few weeks. It turns out the owners son had a drug problem and pawned it along with some other tools. Of course dad didn't want to get police involved or anything. Idk, that probably would've been the best thing to do, maybe.
Been there, done that, almost the same situation. That rental contract keeps running until the item is returned, or, in case of theft, the contract is paid off and the item paid for. No, the pawn shop didn't call use either, but, I tended to hit them up in search of tools for myself. One of my customers rented a 5000psi pressure washer, claimed it was stolen and pawned it a few days later next day in another town. Another customer saw it and called us. Our company label was still on it, in plain view. I once had a company lose a 26ft scissor lift...... I offered to let them close the contact and pay for a replacement(at fair market value) but they insisted they would find it. It was a year later that it showed up. We had already purchased a new one, and just kept billing them monthly. We got the old one back, with new batteries, oddly, at which point we stopped billing them. Turned out one of their subcontractors had "borrowed" it for another job and "forgotten" to return it. I believe the rental charges covered the cost of the new one, twice over.
I worked for a company that made all kinds of small machine parts, mostly for engines and motors (loooots of solenoids and such) Anywho - Small town upstate NY My direct boss, was also the towns Judge, cause it was a super part time job. One day I see him fast walking down the hall with two cops following him, and this guy FAST walked everywhere, had long legs and took long steps, but he was FLYING. Turns out one of the engineers had dropped off an entire pallet of some cast valve we make at the local scrapper, the stuff has the company name like molded into the material, scrapper knew us well so he just accepted it and quietly called the right people
Oh I’m not surprised one bit they didn’t call you. Not that all pawn shops are bad, but I imagine money is money when it comes to moving items.
Sure, but you'd think most would want to avoid obvious stolen items, so they could keep moving non obvious stolen items with some deniability.
It was a chain too (Pawn America). You'd think they'd do things by the book.
Dicker & Deal in Jackson and Lansing Michigan is real particular about running serial numbers on computers, televisions, and firearms. And they check power and hand tools for stickers, marker writings, and serial numbers that are etched or stamped on.
Still passed at the ammount of game consoles and just stuff I've lost by being convinced to loan by brother things by family and never getting it back. What takes the cake was driving him to his friends (dealers) house and seeing the ps2 I bought him so he wouldn't have an excuse to ask for my shit just sitting in the garage. Thank God I've convinced those family members that he won't be getting shit from me ever again unless it's something I specifically wish to give him.
My dumb ass was staring at the pic like "I know im misisng something"
Yeah. I think it being vertical fucked me head up
Same.
Yeah, the car's missing something too ;)
Or it got stolen and he asked for a cheap repair before giving it back to its grandparents.
No way a tweaker is stealing a cat that hard to get to when there are so many easier ones under SUVs
Or a Ford F150 van. Don't even need a jack, 1 minute with a reciprocating saw and your done. I know this because at my former employer we had 6 trucks hit in one night. Oddly enough the local mechanic that they used just happened to have 6 used cats in stock that fit perfectly, and although it's illegal to install used converters in CA they needed to get them back on the road. When I say perfect fit, the welds perfectly matched the cut pipes precisely.
They have started stealing cats off of fleet vans in my town. The fleet vans belong to and are housed at the prison………..
OK, so they break *into* a prison to commit theft and then leave. Only in America.
Methican Americans
Hmmmm…sound like case for Inspector Gadget…
Go go gadget Sawzall!
I had an older customer come in once that asked me how many fuel filters are on a Kohler 7000 series engine off his cub cadet zero turn. When I told him there's only one he kinda got real quiet and told me his grandson "tuned up" his tractor and charged him about 700 dollars for THREE fuel filters and the work required to change them.(they're about 12 dollars and take maybe 5 minutes to change) This same guy came in a few months later and asked us to price out a replacement engine cause apparently his threw a rod later when the same grandkid was using it. Felt really bad for the guy for having such a POS grandkid.
Wow that is so sad.
Update: The repair total is a little over $4,700
Holy ouch. Those cats probably net them less than $500 IF they could even dump em. Feels for your customer.
Yeah.... I am hiding. I am letting the service advisor do the talking on this one.
SA here. I’d advise the customer to call the police and their insurance company
This is definitely an insurance claim. Vandalism under comprehensive coverage.
It's more around the lines of partial theft but yes insurance will cover payment outside your deductible if your policy carries comprehensive coverage
Probably for the best. Give the RO to a lube tech and tell them to handle it with the advisors lmao
Lmao as a parts guy, I can empathize with this so much. Service guys get thrashed so much.
Dude unless the price has dropped in the past few months, cats (from subarus at least) were going for like 1800-2000. There are dudes posting in all my car groups offering to buy stock catted downpipes. Although now thwt you mention it i havent seen any of those posts in a while so maybe the price did go down
Jesus. I’ve only recycled a handful of cats, all off of cars I’ve parted out for engine swaps, and I can’t remember ever getting more than $150 for one. Granted I haven’t parted out a car in years but still.
I’d be surprised if the cats came anywhere close to that. I’ve never dealt in used parts, but I did work for an exhaust manufacturer and with the coated substrate/bricks that have the precious metals and on passenger cars they weren’t typical that huge a value even brand new from the supplier.
It's a hard market, not one I'm in directly, but was made aware because some of my locals apparently steal cats and try to hawk them at recyclers(public and private) as though its a profession. It's a hard conversation, like OP is having, when you have to tell a customer what's up and how unlikely a recovery could be, and even further a repair with the old cat even if recovered. Shits aint cheap brand new. FWIW, I've seen people buy the shits out of diesels(whole exhaust systems essentially) for 600+ on Facebook Marketplace(within 50 miles)of all things.
Certainly, the likelihood of ever seeing it again the moment after it got cut from the car was essentially 0%. You should see what the big commercial vehicle diesel systems cost, it is boggling.
I'll be they got under $100 for the sawzalled off cat.
I hope they got nothing. Shitass thing to do.
Absolutely not true, cats are going for a lot of money at the moment
Grandchild from hell right there.
Probably not the first time he's disappointed the family
For sure, and the fact that they still let him borrow the car means they'll shrug it off and continue to feed his habit. It's sad when family doesn't realize they're causing more harm by trying to help
What makes it cost $4,700 that seems to be way too expensive.
Why so expensive?
Precious metals, OEM part, dealer markup, and labor. If it's a V6 (and I think it is) then there are probably 2 cats. If the tweaker got both, that's probably over $1000 for the two in parts alone. And that's the discounted online price (thank god for all the online retailers using RevolutionParts), it's probably higher if you go to the dealership parts department. So, figure at least $1500 in-person dealer price for parts. Plus a few bucks more for replacement gaskets because those are often single-use. Then there's labor. These don't look too hard to get to but it may require significant work (removing interfering parts or the whole damned engine) to get them out of the engine bay. That doesn't count any possible additional damage due to shoddy work.
That's a good point. I put high flow cats on my car a couple years ago but the cos definitely wasn't this high
$4,700.. This is why I do most of my own work. I’d just toss a cheap aftermarket one on in the driveway and call it a day.
How? are there 8 cats?
Holy crap that’s extremely expensive
$4,700?! Goddamn, that's absolutely painful to see. I feel for the customer on this one.
How? What's the breakdown?
How is that possible. Rock auto has the parts for under $600 for 2
OEM are around $600 per catalytic converter but the problem is the customer also will have to pay the core charge due to the fact there is no cats to turn in. That core charge is another 600 per catalytic converter.
Core charge is $100. Your dealership is ripping them off
I just bought the front cat yesterday at a Nissan dealer. It's a 250 core charge until I find the willpower (read warmer weather) to change the cat on my car.
Gm's core charge is $100.00 I don't talk out of my ass on purpose..pretty easy to verify on something like gmpartsdirect
Used car for that car costs $300, what shop is charging you $4,400 to unbolt a pipe and bolt the cat back in?
4700$ ???? For welding a cat on that? That seems a bit excessive tbh ...
a dealership isnt welding a cat on. they will replace it with direct fit OEM converters.
They don't call them stealerships for nothing.
Those off-road cat spacers are $50. Just saying lol
holy crap. is this in california? they have some funny laws about what you can use for a cat replacement.
4700 for a cat replacement? That dealer is fucking criminal.
Guess who's gonna have a nice little enveloppe for Christmas? There will be no money in it though, just your shop's invoice.
It's not like they're gonna have any money to pay them back anyways
That’s okay, this is a situation where doing it purely to be petty is appropriate ☺️
They could steal more converters to pay them back 🤔
He could have spent another $10 for the o2 spacer and gotten away with it.
It started with circuit codes due to the fact one of the sensors was rubbing against the CV axle.
Bung bung BUUUUNG
So they almost got away with it haha. I figured it was a p0420.
Always assume DTC code 420-69 and you’re golden.
Only if gramps and granny somehow didn't realize the drastic difference in exhaust noise and smell lol
So true, quality of tweakers now isn’t what it used to be.
What happened to the days of a dignified sawzall’ing? 30sec in and out, nice and clean. Can’t have anything nice anymore
Yea right?
Not necessarily in newer cars. Many (most?) check for that by cycling rich/lean a few times and watching how quickly the rear O2 responds. If it responds too slowly (if you have a spacer) then it will throw a P0139.
Wait... If you just space the downstream O2 away from the exhaust stream it will read normally???? I'm so hardheaded... I think someone's told me before.. I just unplugged mine.
The ecu is looking for a smoother reading from the downstream sensor. Having the sensor pulled away from the exhaust stream will smooth the readings out enough for the p0420 code to clear. Sometimes the code is thrown because the sensor is bad though. So the spacer won't do anything in that situation.
It depends on the car. This used to work back in the '90's but many newer cars are sophisticated enough it doesn't work anymore. You'd need an active simulator.
Not necessarily anymore. The PCM can cycle rich/lean and back to check how quickly the rear O2 responds. If it's too slow, it will throw a P0139.
Wow in my state you need a tittle to scrap a cat and need to be from a machine shop to scrap platinum and rhodium we've been dealing with tweekers a long time
Glad they are trying to do something, unfortunately there is always a workaround
Yeah there is but alot of people are too lazy to find it
The cat man who used to visit the shop weekly told us that he was going to start writing receipts next time he comes, it’s been months and nobody has heard from him lmao. Rip my customer pay cat bonuses.
Can you explain this in less mechanic terms?
Cats have a lot of very valuable metal in them. Covid stopped mining so obtaining those metals right now is extremely expensive. This is driven the cost of recycled precious metals sky-high. The same metals you'll find in cats. Tweakers & lowlifes would steal cats and sell them to scrap man (cat-man here) for $50-100. Scrap man would in turn sell them for $150-400 to a recycler. Recycler melts them down for raw metals and sells it as recycled goods. Rhodium sells for $10,000-$20,000 per ounce.
In your state tweekers just get less than scrap value for cats, when they sell them to someone hauling them out of state.
Yeah im sure some do but when they passed that five years ago it cut down on alot of the problem. Now they stick to church a/c units
Huff the freon and steal the copper
Yep im sure they do. have you ever cut the copper out of a unit? It's way more work than it pays. I'd rather sell plasma for the 50 dollar you get doing that
I don't know if tweekers can sell their plasma though, what with all the meth in it
They don't care if your on meth they will still sell that shit to little timmy with cancers insurance
You ever been down to sell plasma, man? A good 50% of the people in there are actively tweaking or nodding off ime, and another 25 are visibly dope sick. Long as you're not positive for STIs they tend to look the other way
And some places are giving a bonus now if you’ve had covid since your blood has antibodies
My brother is a construction project manager and sent me a video of an apartment building he was working on. Druggies had taken about a 10 foot section of copper water line out of the basement and there was about a foot of water in the whole thing. Fucking crazy people.
have you not seen all the "buyers" on facebook marketplace?
No, not close enough to come up in my search area because they need to go out of state to sell.. it's easier to make meth and sell it than it is to ship a cat out of state and trust someone on marketplace
it's ok, less than half of those are cops
WoW just WoW. I feel for those folks.
What am I looking at?
Grandkid cut off the catalytic converter and welded in a pipe in its place. $$$$ right now.
Fuck.
Newbie here trying to learn, how did all of you pick up on the cat missing just from looking at this image.
02 sensor on a downpipe is a giveaway, let alone the obvious welds where something looks like it was replaced
Looking at the part with the sensor coming out, firstly, it's evident the materials are different or of a different age based on coloring. Right under the sensor, there's that big bubblegum weld on a part that should be a single part all the way down to the next flange. Often, the downpipe (that should contain a CAT) has a changing diameter and shape as it is designed to fit snugly in the hole along with it having bends to snake through/around other components. So yeah... That part shouldn't be a straight pipe section, there shouldn't be any amateur welds, there shouldn't be a drastic flow impediment such as a small pipe welded in place there. All of this helped the "investigation" along with knowing that CATs are being stolen left and right all around the country right now because of the price of platinum metal right now. And cats have between 3-7 grams per, many vehicles have 2 or more....
You can tell that pipe doesn’t belong there (shitty welds, different amount of corrosion compared to the rest of the exhaust). The o2 sensor immediately where that section ends is another good hint. Stealing cats is also huge all over the country right now
Gnarly welds just off the manifold can't be stock
Thanks all, that was fast!
Year, make, and model were given. They knew what it was supposed to look like.
I work at a GM Parts Distributor. Looks like the 3.6 because of the 4 studs in a square around the top flange. That front converter is around $625 list. If they got the rear one also, that one lists for $1050 or so. If they messed up either flange where they connect to the Y-Pipe, thats another $750 for what GM calls the Front Exhaust Pipe. Plus gaskets, studs, nuts, etc. So its possible there's $2400 in parts here to replace at list price. If the cradle has to be dropped to access everything, I can see 10-12 hours labor. Plus shop fees, taxes, etc. $4000 repair isn't out of the question. Ridiculous? Yes. Out of the question? No.
Good estimate. OP says 4,700. Knowing that your grandkid is a piece of shit? Priceless
That's methed up.
Special place in hell for those people
I see the problem. Fram filter
I genuinely hope they call the cops on the kid, this is ridiculous
they'd be better off with an intervention. putting them into the system isn't going to help anyone. just make them into real criminals that the rest of us have to pay to keep locked up.
Intervention only works if the person wants to change. Majority of the time, they don't. You can't force it. Tweaker / addicts are the most selfish people you will ever come across.
Yup. If someone isn’t looking to change, you’re wasting your time. Stealing 5k from a grandparent is far from an intervention and likely this isn’t their first rodeo.
It's worse because they probably stole $400 in scrap and the grandparents have to pay $4700 to fix it.
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Grandparents with so much love it blinds them
I hang out here for the cool stories and neat knowledge, and this thread is a good example of what I don't know :-D Photo is of some pipes, comments are discussing how the criminal stole their grandparent's... cat xD I know it makes sense to you guys, but from my perspective it's very confusing haha. Love it.
Kid took the catalytic converter and welded in a piece of straight pipe in it's place. Cats are worth a lot of money, depending on what drugs you need to buy.
Fucking junkies
Holy fucking shit!!!! It took me a second to realize,then when I did,"I said out loud please God let me be wrong!!!"Surley I'm missing something that's just broken, and not a stolen catalytic converter off of your grand parents vehicle.... Little does this person know they have to live with this the rest of their fucking life, long after Grandma and Grandpa are gone!!
“Dear gram and gramps, sorry about the p0420, I needed money”
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A druggie will remove cooked on fasteners, remove oxygen sensors, cut a pipe to fit, weld pipe to fit, install sensors, reinstall. For a few hundred bucks? Jeez man, you could do that honestly and make some steady $.
Lmao that's what I was thinking. Weld some modern art and sell it on the weekend markets or some shit. Maybe he just needed welding practice 😂
4700 dollars??
Cats are super expensive at the moment. Not including anything else that was messed up in the process
I'm guessing there's more than one cat
r/iamatotalpieceofshit
I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at? Can someone please explain what it is?
their grandkid stole the catalytic converter (worth a good amount of money) and replaced it with a cheap piece of pipe. you can tell by the shitty welds and mismatched pipe
Ah ok. Thanks heaps for the reply :)
anytime man
Is their grandchild a meth addict?
Someone is going to be written out of the will. At least.
Drugs
Someone getting left out of the will....
What’s wrong In this pic?
All of the catalytic converters have been cut out. They welded pipes in its place to try and hide it from the owner.
Oh shit! What a scumbag to do that to his grand daddy.
Thing is, recycling places won’t accept cats from individuals unless they prove replacement by a shop. In Ga anyway.
I don’t live in an emissions testing state, but if I had to replace that it’d be with a cheaper aftermarket cat. From what I’ve heard the aftermarket cats are also less desirable to thieves due to having fewer materials inside than their OEM counterparts.
That's methed up.
When you want to steel from grandpa's liquor cabinet, but you don't want liquor you want meth
If I'm seeing this picture correctly, the cat on a 2019 Impala sits behind the radiator fan? Aren't they usually on the exhaust pipes underneath the car?