Hello everyone,
I have a 2008 Subaru Forester; about a few months ago my head gaskets were severely leaking (mixing with the oil etc, but never overheated) so I had to have them replaced by the dealership. Ever since having them repaired I have noticed my car seems less peppy than it used to be, rattles on start up and gets awful gas mileage, and makes a high pitch whistle when under load (ie getting onto the highway entrance ramps or speeding from a stop). This never happened before so I brought it back to the same Subaru dealer and they investigated the issue and came back to tell me it is my rear catalytic converter that is responsible. I looked further into this and it seems to be common when head gaskets leak for the coolant to get into the exhaust system and cause problems with the cat converters. However, despite all this I do not smell the typical ‘egg’ smell and do not have any check engine lights.
I asked my ‘mechanic’ ( he is very knowledgeable about cars and works on them all the time but isn’t employed as one) to replace my rear cat converter for me. But he insists that I need to replace BOTH the front and rear converters because his logic is: if one is having issues downstream that means the one upstream (the front) probably is too and probably has coolant inside of it; and if I don’t replace the front one with it it will not make a difference and will actually affect the quality of the hypothetically replaced rear converter. I’m sorry if that sounds hard to follow; but I want to avoid replacing the front converter as it is extremely expensive compared to the rear one. He claims to hear rattling from both the converters so he is really dead-set on me buying both the converters before he does any work.
I need advice- what do you guys think? Would you bite the bullet and replace both converters? Or would you replace just one, or none at all? Have you ever had to replace your cat converters and what luck have you had? Any brand recommendations?
On a side note having my converters replaced by the dealership is out of the question, they wanted $2,500 to replace the rear one. Any helpful knowledge is appreciated! :grin2:
I have a 2008 Subaru Forester; about a few months ago my head gaskets were severely leaking (mixing with the oil etc, but never overheated) so I had to have them replaced by the dealership. Ever since having them repaired I have noticed my car seems less peppy than it used to be, rattles on start up and gets awful gas mileage, and makes a high pitch whistle when under load (ie getting onto the highway entrance ramps or speeding from a stop). This never happened before so I brought it back to the same Subaru dealer and they investigated the issue and came back to tell me it is my rear catalytic converter that is responsible. I looked further into this and it seems to be common when head gaskets leak for the coolant to get into the exhaust system and cause problems with the cat converters. However, despite all this I do not smell the typical ‘egg’ smell and do not have any check engine lights.
I asked my ‘mechanic’ ( he is very knowledgeable about cars and works on them all the time but isn’t employed as one) to replace my rear cat converter for me. But he insists that I need to replace BOTH the front and rear converters because his logic is: if one is having issues downstream that means the one upstream (the front) probably is too and probably has coolant inside of it; and if I don’t replace the front one with it it will not make a difference and will actually affect the quality of the hypothetically replaced rear converter. I’m sorry if that sounds hard to follow; but I want to avoid replacing the front converter as it is extremely expensive compared to the rear one. He claims to hear rattling from both the converters so he is really dead-set on me buying both the converters before he does any work.
I need advice- what do you guys think? Would you bite the bullet and replace both converters? Or would you replace just one, or none at all? Have you ever had to replace your cat converters and what luck have you had? Any brand recommendations?
On a side note having my converters replaced by the dealership is out of the question, they wanted $2,500 to replace the rear one. Any helpful knowledge is appreciated! :grin2:
)
