A few weeks ago I was getting warranty work done at the dealer. While I was in the waiting room I overheard one of the service reps talking to a customer. He heard about several Maximas (not sure which year) in a lot that had their cats cut out. Apparently someone had used a portable sawzall to remove the cats from several of the Maximas. Who would want these? He figured maybe it was a shop that would use them for repairs.

 

That's just weird! A shop cutting them out to try and resale them to customers? Doubtful, but you never know.

Another possiblity is cashing them in for their recycling value. Cat's contain precious metals, and in certain bulk Lbs some facilities will take them in and pay good cash. No questions asked, and your pockets get fat. If you're the completly clueless criminal, there is even books to spells out how to actually do the recycling part!

I've heard of people going into the undergound tunnels and stealing the telephone wires for recycle too. My local telco told me about this after they discovered miles of phone cable missing. Some of the cable underground is redundant spare wires that they will splice in to for repairs - so it's sometimes not obvious what these crooks are up to until they look deeply at the phone circuts. But, this is a pain to recycle since you have to strip the plastic off the wire in order to sell the bare copper. High voltage wire was popular for a while too.

 

For the time and effort put into stealing a cat would be point less. If theives wanted to make a quick buck then stealing cats wouldnt be such a good idea. Also recycling yards now have a machine where you feed the wire and it stips the wire from the plastic.

 

A similar thing happened at construction sites near where I used to live. Huge spools of copper wire were being stolen, along with compressors and other tools that weren't locked up.

 

cats are expensive. and if you have emissions, you need them..

 

Cat's can be had for <$100


That's not expensive

 

new retail is about 300 for the 2000-01

stealership price is like 500. cheap? i think not.

even if you sell them used @ 100 a pop that's still some income and enough for some junkie to steal them.

 

Most car cats (i.e. catalysts) are made from Platinum, if you have the time you can actually extract the metal from the catalyst and sell that for more money that just recycling a cat. I would be very careful if you ever intend to do that, use proper personal protection (respirator, gloves, maybe a tyvek suit that's at level b).
Platinum is also the same material they use for a number of different chemotherapy drugs. The problem with this is that different states (other than what jewerly would be made of), it is a carcinogen. Platinum in the body essentially kills everything, and while it will kill cancer it will kill everything else to, so chemo drugs are usually a platinum substrate.
So if you're going to do this do your research.

 

We have a junk guy that comes by the shop and buys old cats and aluminum bits off us for cash. $20 each for cats, nice lunch money.

 

I call

You really think a sawzall fits under a Maxima that's on the ground, up into the channel where the exhaust system sits and is able to cut?

Please..