I had a check engine light on for about a month and finally had time to take the car down to the dealer. They said the cat is bad after 18,000 miles so they are replacing it under warranty.

 

Was your engine oil ever over-filled to your knowledge?

 

Not to my knowledge. No idea what could have happened.

 

If the cat was bad something else must have gone wrong. They didn't tell you about anything else? bad o2 sensor maybe?

 

The only things I can think of would be an oil overfill (as I mentioned above) and getting a batch of high sulfur fuel. Watch the newspaper in your area and see if it happens to anyone else. If so, the fuel refinery is liable. One of the oil companies had to pay for a bunch of cats down in Florida or Georgia recently because they released gas with too much sulfur.

 

hmmm interesting. All he said was that the cat needed to be replaced. He didnt give any explanation and didnt really seem to care. Its taking them a while to get the part in.

 

Oh, well.. it is unlikely that whatever caused the first one to die will affect the second one. Bad fuel would be solved by the time you fill up again. My thought is a bad oil change (too much oil)... and they aren't telling you because it was their fault.

 

Your CEL was on for a MONTH and you kept driving it? Did you tell the dealer because obviously something was not working correctly for that month.

 

Yes, the cat wasnt working. I scanned the code when it first happened.

 

Why didn't you take it in sooner?

 

didnt you have the car repaired because of damage from the pulley? if the timing was way off, and you dumped a bunch of gas down the exhaust, it can ruin a cat pretty quickly.

 

I got there when I got there. Im never in a hurry to get to a dealer.

Yes, I had the car repaired from messing up the pulley. The light came on a couple hundred miles after they fixed it so something with that or them fixing it could have caused it.