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Cats 22

I have just had the unfortunate experience of being landed with an unexpected bill of £1,262 for a replacement catalytic converter at 72,000miles in my Ford Focus 1.6 diesel. On checking with some Ford main dealers I found that their Service Managers were unaware of this cost and told me ‘there is no scheduled time for catalytic change’.

Ford Technical Bulletin 91/2009 clearly states that the catalytic converter must be replaced routinely at 75,000 miles as does the service check sheet for the diesel Focus with IV emission control. This needs to be brought to the attention of the motoring public and factored in as an additional fixed cost of running a diesel versus petrol car. I hope you will give this some prominence in your Daily Telegraph column and with your professional colleagues.

Asked on 19 September 2010 by JA, via email

Answered by Honest John
It's not the catalytic converter. It's the Diesel Particulate Filter that replaces the cat converter on some EU4 and all EU5 diesels. Typically they last 85,000 miles to 120,000 miles and that is recorded in the car-by-car breakdown entry for the Focus II. On Peugeots, Citroens, Fords, Volvos and Jaguars, a special fluid that helps to regenerate the DPFs also needs topping up about every 40,000 miles.

The other potentially expensive replacement is the dual mass flywheel. This is not a cost exclusive to Focus or even to Ford. It is typical of any car fitted with a diesel particulate filter and a dual mass flywheel.

That is why I warn about diesel potentially costing a lot more than petrol engines to run: www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/diesel-vs-petrol
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