Me to. The cat was stolen from our Jazz about five weeks ago in SW London in the middle of the day in broad day light. Video evidence shows two oiks parallel park next to it, one gets out with trolley jack and angle grinder the other is the lookout. There’s the horrible noise of the exhaust being cut through in two places, local residents assumed it was a mechanic working on the car. All done in less than two minutes. Eventually I went down the insurance route expecting it to be written off, I would buy back and repair but to my surprise they decided to repair it. Five weeks on I’m still driving a courtesy car as they can’t source some parts. Anyway back to the question, the only way to protect your cat is to park off road otherwise it’s at risk.

If they are desperate for it they will get it, really the scrap yards should stop taking them but doubt that will happen, worth too much....like cable stealing from the green cable boxes on the side of the road its still happening

On 7th October my husband interrupted three men trying to steal the two year old Honda own brand catalytic converter from my 2006 Honda Jazz. The car has been with Artis Accident Repair - via my insurance company - ever since. I keep getting different versions of what the garage have done/are doing.

Bear with, the explanation is long, and my question in the final paragraph if you want to skip to it!

On Friday 11th, the garage's estimator told that the central section of the exhaust had been cut (this corresponded to what my husband had seen when he looked under the car) and the estimator had ordered a new central section; the workshop were taking the CAT off and hoped it would still work, as it didn't look damaged, the workshop would examine it early this week; and that it needed new O2 sensors (we could see from looking under the car that one had been cut) but that the sensors wouldn't be available until December. I have a spare set of sensors (albeit not Honda) and the estimator said he would arrange to have them picked up from me this week, to see if they could use them as a temporary fix until the Honda ones came in.

But then on the morning of Monday 14th (yesterday) I get a call to say the car is ready. The garage told me that after market CAT and sensors had been fitted and I would have a three year non-transferable guarantee. I wasn't happy because the insurance company had said that I'd be contacted before any works were carried out if they wanted to fit after market parts.

Then yesterday afternoon, I get a call from the garage's driver to say he was bringing the car back and that they had only had to weld the exhaust. He said the sensors were fine and hadn't been changed. (We have a picture showing a cut sensor cable at the CAT end - so how could they not be replaced?) He didn't know about the CAT.

The latest - just this afternoon - is that I've had another conversation with the garage's estimator. He is now saying that the central section of the exhaust (which he had ordered in as a replacement part) has been welded, as it was repairable; the CAT was only cut two thirds of the way through and so it has been welded and refitted; one of the sensors has been replaced with a new Bosch one (the second, Honda, sensor was OK).

He's also saying that I will get a five year guarantee, which (after some pressure from me) he said would be emailed to me. It hasn't come yet, but as I type this I realized they don't have my email address).

I asked for a copy of the emissions test and he said they don't do them as they don't have the equipment to do emissions tests.

So I'm quite worried. h*******s did an emissions test when they replaced my original Honda CAT two and a half years ago. That failed after two months and they fitted a Klavius, which also failed after two months. It took them a lot of attempts with the Klavius to get a legal emissions test result. I ended up back at Honda - where the emissions test failed and a new Honda CAT and sensors was fitted. The Honda replacements were fitted two years ago and everything has been dandy ever since. But now I fear I'm in for a repeat of the saga.

So my question is: when a new CAT is fitted or an existing one is removed and welded, shouldn't an emissions test be carried out before the garage sign off that the car is legal?

Edited by marymck on 15/10/2019 at 18:55