Friday, September 4, 2009

What's the Street Value of a Cat?

Turns out, there is one.

Got a call from Frankie last evening, who was in a BART parking lot trying to get home. But his truck sounded loud. VERY LOUD.

He'd already looked under it, found a couple of bolts, and noticed the foot-long gap in his exhaust pipe just before the muffler. He wanted to know what was going on, and more importantly, what to do about it.
I felt like Click and Clack, listening to his described the engine sounds and other details, and this one made sense pretty quickly: Some jackass stole his catalytic converter.


Cats are anti-pollution devices and they're made with platinum. They get super hot and burn off exhaust pollutants before they leave the tailpipe. I'd never heard of them being stolen and sold for the platinum before, but I also live in a sleepy mountain town where we don't have a lot of cat thieving.

He'll be out $300, and I told him to have the muffler shop tack-weld the bolts after installing the replacement so it won't be so easy to steal next time.

3 comments:

  1. I had my cat stolen and installed the CatClamp rather than going with the welding route. The CatClamp is a pretty sweet little invention that I think is going to keep these creeps away from my car from this point on. There number is 419.478.1313. I think they are located in OH.

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  2. He was lucky they ONLY un-bolted it! Here in Utah, they get stolen quite a bit from SUV's and Trucks (since they're easy to get under..) and usually just bring a sawzall and chop chop!

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