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I wonder how the regina is doin?

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Billybob

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Sorry you missed that I removed the cat. I thought it was posted in this thread, maybe it was posted elsewhere. And thanks for your attempts to help. :)

 

The reason the cat was taken out is that a number of years ago it had been replaced with an aftermarket one. After about a year and a half, the neck on the shell of the new converter started to rot out. By law, the shell of an aftermarket converter is warrantied for 5 years or 50,000 miles (the catalyst itself 25,000 miles no time limit). The guy denied it a bit until I printed out the page from the EPA. so the replacement was free, but he wanted about $350 to put it in.

 

Since the car no longer needed to pass emissions in Massachusetts, I just cut it out and put in a straight pipe.

 

As to the O2 sensor, generally the cut off year is1994 for it causing issues if not present.

Steve, thanks for thanks :), I'm not surprised either on your story about the cat replacement.....aftermarkets really sucked back then. But $350 to install it?!?!?! The guy going to weld it in with gold solder? DAYUM.

Have a great Easter Steve, and good luck w/ the job search. Unfortunately I'm in the same boat. The shop I worked in for 20 years as a master tech/ shop foreman (and a brief stint trying to revive it from a dead economy as a co-owner), closed down after the owner deceased. No/ slow business and a mountain of increasing debt so I had to walk away......I still start cussing when I hear somebody mention the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Watched several of my customers jump on that loser program only to be saddled with a vehicle to small for their needs, car payments they didn't need, and vehicles that were in A1 shape destroyed.....stupid damn program.

Now I find myself in a job market that rewards the employees for their dishonesty...literally. My last employer told me I wasn't a "team player" because I would not push unnecessary repairs and services.....and I still won't.

So after 20+ years of doing what I love I've decided to walk away from the auto repair business totally. I'm in school now getting my class A cdl license. Maybe I'll get the chance to see a lot of this great country before our "government" finishes screwing it up.

 

Tight lines everybody!:beers:

"LIFE'S TOUGH......IT'S EVEN TOUGHER WHEN YOU'RE STUPID." John Wayne

 

"Just as the laymen leave medicine to doctors and electronics to engineers, so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking to the experts and have faith in the experts' higher authority. Only experts are able to understand the discoveries of modern science, which have proved that thought is an illusion and that the mind is a myth."

Atlas Shrugged

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2mc - sorry to hear of the situation with the shop that sucks.

 

As to the replacement cat......having been involved in making the catalytic inserts for a long time, I am pretty familiar with the market for them, It was/is a pretty cut throat business and competition. The way it worked was there were "coaters" of the honeycomb ceramic inserts (which is what we did), and then there were the "canners" that would buy the inserts from the coaters.

 

The competition in the market was so fierce that profit margins were VERY low for all involved. For the coaters, one of the biggest issues was that the companies that made the OEM catalytic inserts (Englehard, Johnson Matthey, Allied Signal, among others) would sell aftermarket catalyst inserts at or below coast, because at the time, the new car market was down, and they would fill up there OEM production lines making aftermarket cats and selling them below cost just to keep the plants open.

 

To attempt to compete with that, we would buy raw ceramic honeycombs from Corning at a discounted price for the ceramics that didn't meet OEM specs, but were fine for the aftermarket. We also had to become quite innovated with the precious metal coatings to keep the price down yet perform well enough to meet the EPA mandated warranty specs for both performance and longevity. Even still we neded up making only pennies on the coated inserts that believe it or not were being sold to the canners for only about $10-$20 per each, depending on the application.

 

The canners (Car Sounds, Starlight, and a few others were our customers) were in the same boat. They had to skimp on the amount and quality of the metal cans they used to even be able to compete. In addition, inventory costs for them were out of sight, because there are so many different applications and configurations of the finished converters which they had to keep in stock.

 

We finally decided to get out of that business, as it was just not worth the money, time, and effort to produce something at such a low margin. So we then concentrated on other types of catalysts that were more lucrative, such as those for off road vehicles (mining equipment, backhoes, and such), stationary engines for driving oil well pumps, woodstoves, fast food restaurant flame broilers, and catalytic incinerators for stationary sources such as spray booths, metal casting operations, paper and plywood mills, and any other industry that had to clean up VOC emissions, . Since that time, precious metal prices have skyrocketed, so I can only imagine how much MORE cut throat the aftermarket auto catalyst business is today.

 

As to the $300 for the installation, that was partly because at the time, the rest of the exhaust on the Volvo was in kinda rough shape, and Larry, being a "by-the-book" type of guy, seemed unwilling to "MacGyver" it. And that put me in a tough position, because I could only get the warranty on the catalyst itself going thru him (since he is the one that installed it originally).....so it wasn't like I could go find another shop that would install it cheaper.

"You know the Bill of Rights is serving its purpose when it protects things you wish it didn't."

 

"You can no longer be oppressed if you are not afraid anymore - Unknown"

 

SOL Member #174

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Steve, appreciate your info on the cats. Explains a lot about the headaches we've seen with them. Have a great day. Easter meal's about ready....and nobody better get between me and my plate:D

"LIFE'S TOUGH......IT'S EVEN TOUGHER WHEN YOU'RE STUPID." John Wayne

 

"Just as the laymen leave medicine to doctors and electronics to engineers, so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking to the experts and have faith in the experts' higher authority. Only experts are able to understand the discoveries of modern science, which have proved that thought is an illusion and that the mind is a myth."

Atlas Shrugged

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