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Anyway, usually, if your truck is running sluggish as hell. Or you smell something like rotten eggs. or if your ECM thew a code. One of the three.
From what I've seen, once a cat is really far gone the honeycomb core can break and restrict the exhaust flow through the converter. Basically it plugs the exhaust on its side of the truck resulting in poor performance, etc.
Mine rattled a lot - especially noticeable at idle (usually at a drive through order window ).
I thought it was the muffler making all that noise, but it was the driver side cat.
I wonder if the backpressure from a faulty cat contributes to the ejection of plugs... just a theory.
Anyway, I hope that gives you a little more to go on.
Alright, finally got back. We just dealt with bad cats in the 2000 Expy with the 5.4. The truck was really lacking power and sucking wind. I could also smell sulfur when I was behind it in my car and the truck was pulling a small pop up. Ended up replacing both front and rear cats with a pair of universals and it has its power back as well as sounding a little throatier. I pulled a 25' enclosed trailer weighing in at 7500lbs with the clogged cats and averaged 6.7mpg for the trip. After replacing the cats I averaged almost 9mpg and the trailer on this next trip was 2000lbs heavier.
Long story short, if the truck is sucking wind and smells like sulfur then the cats are probably toast. You can try pulling out the front O2 sensor and feeling for back pressure while the truck is running.
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