October 2, 2026

2000 Tacoma catalytic converter

Yesterday evening late, my wife drove the Tacoma home from the airport at Phoenix. She had parked it there for a week while she was travelling. She reported an extremely loud exhaust noise, but I told her to go ahead and drive it home.

In the morning we looked under the vehicle and discovered that someone had sawed through the front tube to the catalytic coverter! Apparently they had ideas about stealing it, but got interrupted. Or something. At any rate the converter was still there.

This morning I took the vehicle to Discount Muffler up on Ina Road. They welded the pipe back together for $40. A happy ending to something I expected to be much more expensive. A nice shop too, and I may take them other work in the future.

The lady at the front desk told me it would have cost $450 for them to replace and install a new converter because my vehicle would take a universal converter. That too is much less than the $2000 I read about online.

I considered some kind of "armor". Like this:

This place (Skid Row) would sell me a transmission skid plate with catalytic converter guard for $375 (free shipping). However, given that a replacement can be had for $450 I have decided not to spend that money.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Tacoma pages / tom@mmto.org