[ghettosled]

my mom's forester has the CEL on because of a bad cat converter. okay, so she took it to subaru to get their price quote of a little over $2000 . there are some aftermarket cat converters for about $300, but the only person that has experience i could find was on www.subaruforester.com and theirs didnt stop the CEL (i dont know any other info than that). subaru has convinced my mom that only the dealer can fix this because its not as easy as unbolting and rebolting the cat. what else could there be???

 

[touringcamry]

Maybe try allwheeljunkies.com...mostly a Impreza and Evo forum, but they might be able to help you out.

 

[Luckynumber5]

Well, I know when the wrx people get rid of the cat there is an easy way to fool the sensor into thinking its still there without touching the wiring. Get a 18mm spark plug antifouler from auto zone and drill it out till the sensor will screw into it and use it as a spacer. costs under $2 and the cel should never come back!

Its a Help! brand product and there should be a big shelf of them in auto zone.

 

[falnfenix]

what year is it, and how many miles? if the cat's bad and it's under(i believe) 100k miles, then it should be covered by law.

 

[screeber]

Have you tried

http://www.scoobymods.com

I had an old Outback and found tons of tech info there. Never had any cat issues tho.

subaruoutback.org is another good resource.

 

[ghettosled]

its a 2002 with 98k miles. subaru never mentioned it might be convered. thank you all for the help and ill try the web sites touringcamry and screeber suggested.

 

[screeber]

If you still have the CEL code, do a search for it on scoobymods and see if you get some ideas. Maybe a bad O2 sensor? I know there's lots of good info out there about cats and O2 sensors - good luck.