Yummm... Catalytic Converter Soup anyone?

[Viper Specialty]

LOL, what a night. Just got back home a couple hours ago after dropping by a club, then grabbing something to eat. After I pulled into the retaurant, I hopped out of the car, with it still idling As I got out, I see a BRIGHT glow under the driver side behind the tire. Random Technology 1: Dan Lesser: 0.

First thought; "Crap, I know I didnt install neons on this car"

As I hop back in the car to turn it off, I notice sparks coming out of my driver side-pipe, and it has very little flow through it. Clogged cat. Wonderful.

I decide to not let this get me in a bad mood, so I eat "breakfast," then head back outside. I unplug all the driver side injectors, with the plan of nursing a 5-cylinder Viper back to my house if need be...only about 2 miles away. Surprisingly... it runs very well on 5 cylinders! didnt get to drive it though. I heard rattling in the driver pipe, and hopeful it dislodged when cooled, I plugged back in the middle cylinder on the driver side. *Rattle*Rattle*Rattle*Bang*CLUNK* My car gave me a series of presents. The majority of my 250$ Metallic Substrate Cat was now sitting on the pavement. Well, at least there isnt a whole lot of restiction! I drove it home and checked it out... no damage other than the Cat. I will pull it apart tomorrow and gut the rest of it until I can get a replacement next week.

Is there something I dont know here!?!?!? I have installed dozens of these cats in the past, never an issue- even on cars making HUNDREDS more HP than mine. I have had a totally stock tune in my car for the past 3 weeks as I havent had time to "road-load" tune an A/F program for my setup, so it wasnt like I was dumping fuel or anything as a result of a bunk program. very strange. It just seems like I have heard of an abnormal number of failures in this Cat type recently... and now I had one too.

 

[Art 138]

I see now why you want the door sills; did this action burn the paint off the sill paint?? Must have created some overwhelming heat.

 

[Mike-Tampa]

Too bad....be glad it's the exhaust and not the intake!!

 

[SRTRICKY]

Yikes...hope my random tech cats don't fail on me

 

[Vic]

Daniel, have you run fuel cleaner through your gas tank? I've seen two examples, where if you use that stuff too much, it will destroy the cats.

 

[Viper Specialty]

ART138- Nope, no sill paint damage, thankfully. That is one intellegent thing Random Tech did.... the Cat is in front of your feet, in the middle of the space before the Toe Box. It is surrounded by steel, and thats it. It is not even close to any painted surfaces. Lucky, it was also cold last night, in the 50's.

MIKE- Hell yes! better on the way out than in!!!

SRTRICKY- I am certainly a sceptic now...thats for sure. I may see how a straight pipe corsa with CCI triple disks sounds. If it sounds the same as with cats, hell... I'll go that route.

VIC- I NEVER run that stuff in Vipers. Anything powerful enough to burn away deposits that 1000's of degrees of flame front CANT, have no place in a Viper engine. IMHO.

 

[acrdakota]

Honestly guys if your burning up cats N/A your car is running WAY too rich.

And those small body round cats ****. The ceramic inside provides a good bit of backpressure so an oval open design is MUCH better. From what I have seen the only difference between the "high flow" and regular cats is the transitions in the casing.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that slaping a set of magnaflow highflow oval cats on there would make just as much of a performance gain as the randomtechs. But for 1/3 the price. I've got a pair of 3" in/out cats if anyone wants to test it.

 

[Viper Specialty]

ACRDAKOTA- Car was NOT running rich. I do have wideband capability, on top of the car running on a stock tune for weeks before this occured.

Also, these were not ceramic substrate cats, they were metallic substrate. The CPI of the substrate used by Random tech is generally better than what I have seen elsewhere in the market, they are not very restrictive- my dyno results with very few mods and some good tuning were alone a testament to that.

Generally, the difference between substrates in a regular cat and a High-Flow is the ability of the substrate to do its job BETTER. This allows more flow due to changes in CPI and substrate size/shape, while the cat still retains it efficiency.

I will be the first to admit, this is WIERD. I have installed dozens of these in the past, and never had an issue until this one. However, I did notice, of the last two sets of these I have recieved, the converter casing does differ from "last years" models. I just hope that RT didnt do something stupid, keep their prices the same, and we are going to pay for it in the long run?

On a side note, the substrate appears to have melted from the Outside inwards- which is very odd. Virtually every "melted cat" I have ever seen started in the center, and worked its way outwards. This leads me to believe the substrate was faulty/cracked/installed incorrectly, or even possibly loose. it looks like the inboard center popped out when the outsides melted, and it was forming a "jumbling around plug" that occasionally would plug the hole. That would explain the intermittent weird sound out of the driver side pipe that my car has had over the last week or two, that never could be traced and never amounted to anything. Must have put the icing on the cake last night, and it finally showed when I parked on a toward-the-driver banked parking spot.

 

[Y2K5SRT]

And I assume you are contacting Random Tech directly and speaking with somebody at the top, right? Don't settle for a call center person that can't actually impact this issue.