Rear Exhaust and cats issue :(
 

Please can someone, anyone help ?

I have a 2001 Porsche boxster 986 and have been told after much trouble that I need a rear exhaust box with two new cats. The garage has quited me £1280 :( I am literally having a heart attack. Please can anyone advise if this is right? or an alternative place to buy where it would be cheaper?

Thank you in advance

Naz

Well, from an emissions point of view, the exhaust muffler (box?) doesn't matter, only the cats, which you could probably source a used set to replace cheaply -- just make sure that you inspect them for deterioration before installing. If the honeycomb is intact and not scorched they should be fine. On your car, only the front cats (attached to exhaust manifolds) are actually monitored and required for emissions on a US car.

You'll want to make sure that the shop that does the work is very very careful though, because the exhaust bolts are known to be snappy when removing -- use plenty of PB blaster and heat to remove.

It's difficult to determine what signs or symptoms warrant replacement of your rear muffler and cats. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but on the RoW (UK) oem exhaust system, there are no primary cats - just what we refer to as the "secondaries". If this wasn't the case, a simple solution would be to delete and bypass the cats and simply replace the muffler if need be . However, in your case, deleting the cats would render the vehicle "catless". This in turn will create but another list of problems (i.e. CEL"s, OBD compliance, need to re-program the ECU ect...) . Sorry, but without more info it's difficult to advise.

Do you know how that system is monitored? The US system has the lambda sensor after the primaries on a 2001. Does the UK have them after the "secondaries" but fore the muffler?

I am planning to RoW flash mine after putting the clutch and transmission back in, so I'm interested in how the whole thing is monitored for that DME image. I was under the impression that it only monitors the precat lambdas, so no CEL for cat delete.

It's my understanding that many RoW vehicles do not have pre-cats on the headers . Rather, they only have only the secondaries . As far as where the 02 sensors are, I suspect that they're similarly located - fore and after the cats .

There is only one o2 sensor per bank on EU Boxsters, no control of the cat efficiency.

From my imported US MY 2000 Base Boxster I have both a set of rear cats and a muffler in my garage somewhere that I could sell well below what you have been offered.
Not sure if it is the same type of rear cats on US as it is on ROW but I guess it can be checked.
Heavy parts also but there must be someway to ship this from Sweden to UK at a reasonable price.
Send me a PM if interested