My 06 has been showing a damaged o2 sensor since I bought it 3 weeks ago so when I removed the old one to replace I find that the old sensor has sheared off at the cats entry point on further investigation the inside of the cat is loose and completely destroyed I must replace it
Qs what would cause this to happen
And will this affect the performance as I have never driven it without this fault

Thanks Paul..
Ther car has only 45,000 Kilometers still under guarentee thankfully.

 

If I understand correctly, you will most likely need a new sensor. As for a CAT, you can probally save some money and get an aftermarket high flow CAT or test pipe. I cant really reccoment which one to get since I dont know how strict your area is on emissions testing. In my area though there is little or no emission testing and it is on the verge of being completely phased out, so Test Pipe with the heatchield attached is the way I like it. It honestly all depends on how "enviromentally friendly" you are and what risk you want to take with not passing inspection and stuff like that. If you are fine with the Test pipe though you will probally save a few bucks. They arent too awefully expensive. You will probally just get a few "more enviromentally concious" people telling you you are hurting the enviroment when you mention it. We call them tree huggers up here. Lol. Im just letting you know there are more options than going to the dealer and getting screwed on getting a new catalitic converter. Take care and good luck on getting everything sorted out.

-Ian

 

When I bought my S2000 it had the exact same problem. The previous owner had replaced the O2 sensor, but the end of the sensor was still inside the cat. When I put a new cat on it made a significant improvement in performance. The car was supercharged so I suppose it was more affected by exhaust flow than a NA S2000 would be though. I honestly felt like mine picked up 30-40hp though, a major gain. You have to think, if swapping from a cat that flows very well, to a test pipe can pick up 5hp. Certainly a beat up testpipe with an O2 sensor actually inside of it is going to rob considerably more than that. It would also depend how much the sensor has rattled around and beat up and clogged the honeycomb in the cat. Definitely take it by the dealer and have it swapped, you certainly stand to pick up a few HP from it, whether you can feel the difference or not may be another question.

PS: This is TOTALLY not what I thought this thread was going to be about, haha. I was picturing pieces of dead cat scattered throughout the engine bay

 

mine failed with approx. 20,000 miles on the clock. dealer couldn't explain why, but replaced it quickly under warranty. they suspect it was from driving through a puddle of cold water with a really hot cat. couldn't say if I did exactly that or not.

FWIW, the o2 sensor wasn't damaged at all.

 

 

my good friend had a SC ap1 with the same problem car had 22k on it, pulled the exhaust off cause of a funny rattle and the inside of the cat was tosted! seems to comon with the S not to sure why?

 

He said the car is under warranty: "Ther car has only 45,000 Kilometers still under guarentee thankfully."