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[Fin]

Following on from my post regarding the appearance of a 'Fuel Trim' fault code, I had a close look at the cats when examining my Lambda sensors and I don't like what I see.

The outer casing is crumbling and looks quite fragile and quite a lot seems to have fallen off.

The car is a 2001 2.6 V6 CDX saloon with Auto box and has about 71,000 reasonably careful miles on the clock, and the cats are original.

At present I can get about 30mpg on a longish motorway/ dual carriageway run although this drops to about 20mpg about town.
I'm planning on keeping the car for a few years more.

My questions are:-
How long do these things normally last? Given the condition of the exterior, is it likely that the internals are shot?

Where would you recommend I source replacements if this proves necessary (must be e9  R103 spec), and what would be the approximate cost?

Are cats difficult to fit to this vehicle (everything else in the engine compartment seems to be a bit of a nightmare!) and any tips/tricks?

Best wishes

Fin

[Bent valve]

Are you sure its the cats and not just the heatshields that have corroded?

[tunnie]

Cats (genuine ones) out live the car, mine is on 148k, seen ones with 250-300k going fine, they may look badly corroded (they are 7 years old at least!) They will still work fine!

If you do replace them, get a good pair of second hand genuine ones, pattern ones are bl00dy awful, noisy as hell and don't last!

As above too, check the heat shields, they corrode very badly, cats themselves are practically indestructible.

[mark.adams]

Just to add the genuine cats from Vx are around £250 each TC....