By joey on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 10:34 am: Edit

What are signs of bad catalytic converters?

By Ron on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 11:04 am: Edit

Rattles and smells like rotton eggs. Also holes in them. Giant dents from off road too.

Ron

By Joshua Bova (Jbova) on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 11:46 am: Edit

What year and mileage is your Disco?

-josh

By joey on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 12:05 pm: Edit

it's a '95 with 77,500 miles.

By Joshua Bova (Jbova) on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 12:17 pm: Edit

Congratulations, if your cats are bad you are entitled to free replacement (assuming you are in the US). There is an EPA warranty that requires coverage for all major emissions related parts on all vehicles from model year 1995 or newer with less than 80,000 miles. So take those rattling cats to your local LR dealer and have it fixed. I'll post two links to the warranties later today. I had mine done a couple months ago, I had over 79 kmi when I brought it in. They quoted me over $1400 for the parts alone, without tax or installation. Look back here later.

-josh

By SMA on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 12:29 pm: Edit

a sure sign of bad cats are: 1. garden flowers shredded 2. Cat crap on your sofa 3. Cat leaps from under bed, bites you, then runs off

By Lee on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 12:48 pm: Edit

Josh: Do you necessarily have to have a problem with the converter or can you just take it in an ask for a replacement cat? I have a 97 Disco with 38K.

By Bill Gill (Bluegill) on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 01:49 pm: Edit

damn, SMA beat me to the "bad cat" jokes...

By Steve (Steve2) on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 01:58 pm: Edit

more signs of a bad cat are
1: guilty expression on their faces and the bird is gone
2: small cat sized cigarette butts laying around
3: you discover issues of 'playcat' magazine under his cozy bed
4: suddenly catnip is not enough and all he wants to do is wear his 'hell's kittys' leather coat, ride his mini harley and he starts to call you his "square old man"....

steve
...and they were just kittens a few days ago...

By Joshua Bova (Jbova) on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 03:01 pm: Edit

Lee. No, the part must be diagnosed as bad.

Here is some more info:

This one is an FAQ page from the EPA, it covers the basics and will answer a lot of your questions.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/obd-faq.htm

This one is the full text of the warranty, it has every detail.
http://www.epa.gov/OMS/consumer/warr95fs.txt

There is a contact person listed at the bottom of the FAQ page. Her name is Holly Pugliese, I asked her a few questions via e-mail, and she was very helpful. As far as the LR dealer, I mentioned that I had found a warranty that looked like it should cover the repairs. The service writer said he would contact the LR rep and get back to me. I gave him my cell phone number, and by the time I was 5 miles from the dealership he called me and told me it was covered. I don't have a long standing relationship with this dealer, but he was still happy to help me. The thing to remember is that the dealer is actually going to be on your side for the most part. They only sell Land Rovers, they will not be paying for the repair, in fact they are going to get paid to do the work by LRNA. So keep the service dept as your ally and it should be no problem.

There is a section in the full text version that talks about reasons why a dealership can deny a claim. One of the reasons listed is excessive abuse such as off-road driving. Don't let this scare you. If your dealer tells you that driving a Land Rover off-road is abuse, he'll be selling Aztecs after LRNA is done with him . My truck has spent a lot of time off-road, and it is pretty obvious just looking at it. They didn't even blink.

You do not have to be the original owner.

Hope this helps. Ho will be posting this info somewhere on the site later.

-josh