Hello everyone. I was just wondering if anyone had the same issue with their Mini. My wife was driving her Mini S home and all of the sudden the catalytic converter came apart right around the front weld of the converter. If you can imagine a coffee can as this is what it looks like and the base of the can coming apart right around the bottom edge. I found it odd as it appears that there was hardly a weld around the cat to begin with.
Anyway I can't drive it as it sounds like you know what and also the half of the cat along with the back end of the exhaust is now hanging there.
Can I get a replacement Cat welded in place or do I have to get a whole entire header/cat assembly?
Any help would be great.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like a custom Magnaflow exhaust is in your future.

At last years MITM I asked some folks who had a nice system built at All Star Muffler 120th&Hwy 85 in Brighton. Sounded and looked good.

I suspect they can put in a quality high-flow cat for you too.

Otherwise, it is dealer time. Is your MINI out of warranty (older/early R50/R53), if not cat and system might be covered on MINI warranty or still covered due to emissions law.

 

No it's out of warranty. It's a 2002. I'll give them a call tomorrow and see what they can do. Thanks for the help.

 

Get a nice aftermarket header, you will pick up some performance and a little more sound.

If you are on a tight budget or maybe the wife prefers the car as quiet as possible then find a slightly pre-owned OEM header, they are typically very available and cheap from owners with upgraded exhaust systems. This could very well be cheaper than getting the cat replaced.

 

Well here is a interesting little tid bit of info. It turns out that there is a federal emissions mandate that states that all emission related equipment on a car has to work for at least 80K. If anything breaks due to a manufactured defect, in this case being the catalytic converter, it is is to be replaced free of charge regardless if the car is past its manufacturer warranty or not but only up to 80K miles.
That being said, I got my exhaust replaced for free today by Ralph Shomp on Broadway. Big time cudos to ALL STAR MUFFLER for letting me in on this bit of information. I need to drop off a case of beer to the boys there for saving me a bundle.
Down side is that one can only take it back to a dealership to get this taken care of so I had to drive it over there from Broomfield. The guys at the dealership did mention to me about the ingenious tie wire job I did to seal up the exhaust back up and to keep it from falling apart further on the way there.
The other down side is because I had the repair done for free, while it was there I had a set of stripes put on the bonnet. It turns out one was positioned off quite a bit as compared to the other side so now I have to drive back again and waste another half a day waiting around for them to correct that. Nothing is ever a straight line it seems.

 

Nice to know on the exhaust/cat issue. To bad about the stripes, somebody must have rushed the stripe job.

Are you going to replace the stock exhaust with a cat-back type system?

 

Please remember that Mike Syfritt of Aesthetic Creations (www.aestheticcreations.net) will be back for the 4th year at MITM4 in August at Copper Mountain. Mike has done thousands of MINIs and is very creative and quite **** at getting things right. If you doubt, come take a look at my custom red Cobra stripes that he did for me last August. Then you decide.

Mike will have a signup page going up in the near future for MITM installs. No holds barred - any color, shape, style, graphic....and they don't even have to be stripes. Check his site out.

JPS