Hi

[Liz]

Its ok to put your head in the sand about it, but how many more out there have this problems and we NEVER hear about it because they are not members of this lovely club. The stats would make interesting reading I think.  

As I posted in another thread, my local dealer had two in within the past 2 weeks for knackered engines due to pre-cat failure, neither members on here, both had engine rebuilds, hope that had warranties poor sods. Someone is making money out of this problem!

[markiii]

to be honest as far as I can see it's a no brainer if your out of warranty.

whatever you beleive causes the precat problem, and wether you beleive it'a cause or a symptom really isn't the point.

It's fact that if your precats go it will bugger up something.

wether you subscribe to bits being sucked into the engine, and/or you beleive it drops down and blocks teh main cat.

Neither is good and either WILL break your engine.

If you are out of warranty there is NO downside to removing teh pre-cats.

[heathstimpson]

If you are out of warranty there is NO downside to removing the pre-cats.

I can vouch for that and my car still has plenty of warrenty with low mileage. It must also help performance with removing a restriction in the gas exhaust flow and sounds better  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

[Anonymous]

I think the issue of gutting precats isn't all that simple, for example, when you come to sell your cars are you going to tell the owner that you have?  

That's there's an increased cacogenic risk attached to the car, that you did it yourself with a screwdriver and hammer, that the exhaust is now non-standard, pops and bubbles?  That if they decide to change the MOT rules to be slightly stricter (not unexpected) and include a warm up test, the cars going to fail?

A lot of people buying these cars know nothing of such things, just care about FSH and all the rest of it, it'd be off putting I reckon.

To be fair, I'm going to gut my pre-cats, maybe, but I can certainly see how a lot of people don't want to, not only for fear of rounding bolts but also because not much is know about this whole problem anyway, whose to say the cats are a problem, not a symptom?  Whose to say that this happens on less than a tenth of a percent of cars (how many do we know about in the UK, maybe 20 something like that, compared to how many cars sold?),  How many engine failures occur which are not pre-cat related?

Having said that, my cars a month out of warranty I bet the pre cats go any day now.

[markiii]

I think the issue of gutting precats isn't all that simple, for example, when you come to sell your cars are you going to tell the owner that you have?  

That's there's an increased cacogenic risk attached to the car, that you did it yourself with a screwdriver and hammer, that the exhaust is now non-standard, pops and bubbles?  That if they decide to change the MOT rules to be slightly stricter (not unexpected) and include a warm up test, the cars going to fail?

A lot of people buying these cars know nothing of such things, just care about FSH and all the rest of it, it'd be off putting I reckon.

To be fair, I'm going to gut my pre-cats, maybe, but I can certainly see how a lot of people don't want to, not only for fear of rounding bolts but also because not much is know about this whole problem anyway, whose to say the cats are a problem, not a symptom?  Whose to say that this happens on less than a tenth of a percent of cars (how many do we know about in the UK, maybe 20 something like that, compared to how many cars sold?),  How many engine failures occur which are not pre-cat related?

Having said that, my cars a month out of warranty I bet the pre cats go any day now.

With regard to the issue about symptom or cause I beleive I addressed that 2 posts up  :-) :-) :-)

with regard to would I tell a new owner.

in a word no.

Why not?

The precats aren't needed for UK emissions law, it will pass with just the main cat. They can't change the emissions level retrospectively for old cars that have already been built other wise those that weren't over engineered from the off would all fail.

The celica for example has the same engine but no precats. so a change would cause that to fail as well  s:-( :-( s:-(  neither do any of teh other cars in teh UK model range that use the 1zz engine.

[Anonymous]

You make good points, and i'm really just playing devils advocate, I do think we'd all do well not playing up the pre-cats thing as i've said before, so won't go over it again.

As a buyer of a new car, I'd expect to find out everything which is non standard,

And toyota don't do anything which costs money, unless they think its needed, so why have they put pre-cats in at all?  Are we sure taking them out won't cause damage?

[markiii]

Pre cats are there because they are need for the US market to pass teh ULEV emmisions level.

Toyot needed to pass that in the US.

It's cheaper to use teh same design globally than have a different manifold made for different markets.

Thats the one and only reason we have them

[Anonymous]

Do they not sell the Celica in the US?

[markiii]

yep they do, but toyota never went for ULEV certification for it

[heathstimpson]

Do they not sell the Celica in the US?

I don't think so but may have to stand corrected.   s:? :? s:?  Perry will know through his other owners clubs.

[Slacey]

The Celica is definately sold in the US. See here -  w www.newcelica.org w  for confirmation  s:wink: :wink: s:wink: