tacosrock143

I recently bought a used 02 firebird v6 (W68 sport appearence; y87 performance)

i saw that it had a new catalytic converter on it.

Im just curious but is there a flaw in the design or any other reason that causes this thing to go bad early? (car has just over 94,000 miles)

Thanks!

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Not sure if the V6 cars use the same cat or not, but the '00-'02 V8 F-body cats have an issue with some of the metallic coatings wearing off, thus causing their oxygen storage capacity to be reduced (and thus an increase in tail pipe emissions). It's not a problem unless you have a sniffer test to pass.

But any cat can fail in other ways that have nothing to do with design flaws. If a bunch of raw fuel gets dumped into the cat (from an excessive misfire condition, or horribily rich A/F ratio for whatever reason), then the cat can overheat and begin to melt/crack/clog. They can also become damaged from physical impact due to road debris/speed bumps that are taller than your ride height can handle/etc.

Also, there are people that steal cats right off of parked cars, for their precious metal content.

So there are several possibile reasons why yours has a new cat.

Camaroo1

Its common on the v6 cars...one small cat that gets used hard....