My main cat died months ago and I just got around to scanning the pics. Mine died right on the track, just wouldn't boost past 7psi on the secondary anymore. The car has had a downpipe on it for years, these pieces are actually of the first brick crumbling along with the wire mesh that holds it in place. If you suspect your cat being clogged, just peer down the inlet. It's pretty obvious

 

What did you replace it with? HF cat or another factory cat?

I wounder if anyone has devised a flow test to pick up the problem before it gets bad enough to cause lost boost. (ie lots of backpressure)

 

I replaced it with another (used) stock one. I called Mazda Motorsports right off the bat. A new one was like $1900 and there wasn't one in the country they could sell me anyways

 

that sucks b/c i am sure you would have JUMPED right on that one!

 

Yes, i will save the stock cat that we have. Looks to be a good investment as good stock ones become scarce.

 

Damon, buy my bonez hi flow from me

 

do you have a air pump?

 

do you have a air pump?

 

Yes, I have a functioning air pump. My engine is stock except for a downpipe and catback.

 

_$1900_ for a catalytic converter?! What the hell is wrong with Mazda? That's obscene. HF cats aren't even close to HALF that cost. In fact, stock cats for other cars aren't even that much.

Stupid Mazda. First they misquote RX-8 power numbers, now they're charging 2 g's for a damn cat. The more I hear, the more I feel burned.

 

SanJo, they are producting a product with rare metals inside in extremely limited quantities with very limited demand. Of course it's going to cost a lot.

 

Either that or they are keeping large parts around for the last 10 years - which also costs money.

That's why comunities like this are so important. There are a bunch of perfectly good used parts kicking around.

share the love.

 

Wanna see what heat does to the PREcat?





Mind you those swirl marks were THERE when we cracked the thing open. The main cat's guts are not made out of a metal material hence why you can just punch their guts out. So if our heat does this to this metal, I sure don't want to see what it does to the main can.....

Oh, this precat had about 60k miles or so on it.

 

Good pics flybye, Lesson here is. If you still have the pre-cat get rid of it!

 

When my precat came out, it was awfully heavy. I wonder if that's from years of debris clogging it up...

Thanks for the pics.

 

damn that's gross. hey i pulled my smog pump and i have a 3" DP so how long will it take before my main cat's is gone? btw my smog pump stopped working sometime in the past 2 years i only found out when i tried to smog it a few months back.

 

Tanabe, I think the point of the last few threads, is that no one knows for sure, but there are lots of opinions.

 

yea, that looks freakin nasty....

is it common for the main cat to clog with the air pump working? i thought as long as the air pump was on it's not going to clog.

btw, how did u diagnosis that it was the cat and not something else?

 

Could any air get through there at all?? Looks impossible to me.

 

looks like some kinda alien LOL

 

If the pre-cat fails, yes. The crap coming out of the pre-cat has to go somewhere...

 

On a side note......
If you notice all the particles on the floor.... THATS the crap that came out of the precat.

 

I've got another datapoint.

My car, 64K miles, no pre-cat since 42K miles. The car has never been tracked, but it has been auto-x a lot. Tonight I pulled my original cat (looks PERFECT on the outside) to replace it with a 5K mile cat from a 94 with a little die grinder work on the big 'ol weld beads the factory put on there.

Anyway I peered inside my cat and saw pieces. Not many pieces fell out, but you can see that the bricks are breaking up. I installed the DP myself and looked at the cat at the time, it looked PERFECT inside.

I think the stock cat(s) just can't stand up to a lot of heat. Run the car hard a lot, especially at track days the cats will fail. This also happens to other types of cars too. Like I said I haven't been to a track day, but I do auto-x on a small track that has runs times in the 4-5 minute range. That is probably enough time to get the cat really hot.

I think I caught mine before it really started to plug, I didn't notice much of a power gain with the new cat, I do get 9psi at 7k rpms vs. 7-8psi with the original cat.

 

Damn, that's nasty Damon!

 

is it true that if you drive around 75mph in 3rd gear for 1.5 hours you will cook all the crap that has built up in your cats out?