New Cats?

[pastorjeep]

My wife's 05 Expy (215K one owner) is getting a cat out of range CEL. I just keep clearing it and letting her drive since it runs great. If it idles for more than a few minutes it will set the code again. At first thought it was phasers not returning at idle, but not getting any phaser noise. I do the 3K 5w-30 synthetic dance and it will use a quart every thou. I rarely drive it but the other day went to pass someone and it was a dog. Lot's of noise from engine sounding strong but clearly felt choked. Nowhere near a quick as my ram 1500. So n ow I am thinking it is the cats getting stopped up? I took a three hour trip and watched the cat temp on the scanner and the inlet/outlet temps were right in range @ 1400 degrees. Any tips for checking cats? This thing runs great and she loves it with our six kids....but I don't see it as worth "new" cats.

 

[05-Alive-515]

A few years back I replaced both cats in my 05 with a couple of generic 2.5” magnaflow ones. I think they were about $75/ea and paid local muffler shop to do the work. At the time I had them put a flowmaster muffler on at the same time. All in I think it was about $200 labor.