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Just posting this as a warning. Lately been seeing guys advertising to buy catalytic Converters for recycling. They advertise for the converters from 5.00 to $50.00 from your wrecks.
This is causing problems with some of the car dealers and mosyly people with truck and vans. Theives are going around with cordless sawsall and cutting these of your trucks and selling them for the scrap. The scrap places are after the Platinum in the converters.
So be aware that this could happen. Trucks are the main target because they can get under them easier.
This just happened to oe of my co workers today. The police told him it is happening quite a lot lately. They hit dealer lots and apartment lots. They can get several in one shot.
Has this happened to any one here. We are in Canada.
I'm not sure how they do it. I was told by one scrap yard that they pay for complete untampered converters and the crate them up for some other company that then ships them over seas to china where labor and lives are cheap and they get workers there to get the platium out. How they get it out is in our imagination.. I would dare to say not very safely to the workers.
They just busted a local guy around here with stealing more than a hundred of them out of good cars/trucks and a bunch from one scrap yard and sold to another.
Doesn't surprise me! Scrap metal prices are high as of now and there was always news out of Memphis TN where people were stealing AC units and copper wire from power lines!
Just heard from a member in Quebec Canada. It seems to be almost an epidemic there. The laws are your suspose to have them in your vehicles if they came from the manufacturer with them. If caught without them you receive a hefty fine. These start to cost for replacements around $300.00 and up here in Canada. While the theif gets at the most $50.00 for it.
There is a demand for the metals used in them.
There are so many cat converter theives around here. It was getting to the point where almost every large vehicle was getting the ripped off. It seems to have calmed down a bit (probably because of the cold weather). A lot of them were getting pulled in a grocery store parking lots in broad daylight. Kind of makes me wonder what people think when they see a guy running around with a sawzall climbing under people's trucks. I kind of hope someone takes mine, so I can get a free flow, but I don't want anyone touching my trucks.
Last edited by cdrmotorsports; Jan 16, 2008 at 06:52 PM.
There was a new car dealership near me awhile back that had 20-30 cats stolen in one night. Cost the dealer BIG money to replace the converter and all the nice stainless pipes that got hacked.
Wire theft is a big issue here. Theives will knock down street lights then back up and hook the cable to their bumper. They end up pulling about 400' of 4 gauge wire out of the ground.