Tom

Greetings   Tom,

Q When paying an aftermarket retailer to order a catalytic converter for me,

can I be assured that the converter will fit my existing exhaust system and
coupling hardware from the old converter? Or will the new converter have its
own hardware?

James—Smyrna,   Tennessee

James,

A Aftermarket retailers install “one-size-fits-all“ converters. How do they

do this? The catalytic body is made small so that it fits into the underside of
most vehicles; then the inlet and outlets are plumbed with various adapters.
In this way, aftermarket retailers can keep a relatively small inventory of
converters on hand and adapt them to a large vehicle population. The new cat
will be installed using plumbing adapters for your exhaust system, along with
clamping and hanging adapters. It will be far from OEM configuration.

A real concern I have is that sometimes aftermarket catalytic
converters do not have the unburned gas-processing capability of the OEM
cat. So be careful, and ask questions about the processing capability of the
replacement cat before installing it.