TinyVoices
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Originally Posted by d00df00d
Originally Posted by TinyVoices
I have the cat, I have just heard from all the forums that they fail easily and get blocked up and cause a ton of issues, hence everyone running cat deletes. If that isn't true, i'll throw it back in.
Oh, it's true alright. But mainly because people flood their engines, drive way too long with their engines running like crap, and then keep driving after their cats have clogged up. Often they don't stop until the cat glows after short drives or the engine just won't run. By that time it's far too late.
S2s are less susceptible to flooding and poor running, and the S2 cat is bigger. Plus, the symptoms of a bad cat are pretty obivious once you know what they are; the car basically just runs out of breath at high RPMs. If you stay on top of things, you'll be fine. Even if the cat does fail, you can catch it and fix it long before it takes anything else with it.
My R3's cat failed at ~54k miles. The failure appeared literally within hours of when I picked the car up from an incompetent dealership (airbag recall). Then I drove on it for like 2k miles while trying various troubleshooting steps because I wasn't getting a CEL and didn't know better. The engine ran another 20k miles before compression fell below Mazda's spec for warranty replacement -- but it never got bad enough to cause any starting or running problems. And I know for a fact that compression wasn't the best when I bought the car at 21k miles -- probably because the car had been a dealer demo or something for like a year and a half before it was sold.
But yeah, it is a possibility. You just have to weigh that against the toxic crap you're spewing without a cat. For me, it was a no-brainer. I refuse to be "that guy". But it's your call.
I likely will throw it on. The PO said the cat was removed at like 14k miles and never reinstalled so its likely that it'll last me a while before failing. I'll probably throw it back in considering its a quick and easy job.
Originally Posted by TinyVoices
I have the cat, I have just heard from all the forums that they fail easily and get blocked up and cause a ton of issues, hence everyone running cat deletes. If that isn't true, i'll throw it back in.
Oh, it's true alright. But mainly because people flood their engines, drive way too long with their engines running like crap, and then keep driving after their cats have clogged up. Often they don't stop until the cat glows after short drives or the engine just won't run. By that time it's far too late.
S2s are less susceptible to flooding and poor running, and the S2 cat is bigger. Plus, the symptoms of a bad cat are pretty obivious once you know what they are; the car basically just runs out of breath at high RPMs. If you stay on top of things, you'll be fine. Even if the cat does fail, you can catch it and fix it long before it takes anything else with it.
My R3's cat failed at ~54k miles. The failure appeared literally within hours of when I picked the car up from an incompetent dealership (airbag recall). Then I drove on it for like 2k miles while trying various troubleshooting steps because I wasn't getting a CEL and didn't know better. The engine ran another 20k miles before compression fell below Mazda's spec for warranty replacement -- but it never got bad enough to cause any starting or running problems. And I know for a fact that compression wasn't the best when I bought the car at 21k miles -- probably because the car had been a dealer demo or something for like a year and a half before it was sold.
But yeah, it is a possibility. You just have to weigh that against the toxic crap you're spewing without a cat. For me, it was a no-brainer. I refuse to be "that guy". But it's your call.
I likely will throw it on. The PO said the cat was removed at like 14k miles and never reinstalled so its likely that it'll last me a while before failing. I'll probably throw it back in considering its a quick and easy job.