Yesterday, I had a Subaru and a Honda, both around 10 years old, show up with melted cats, barely able to drag themselves beyond walking speed. I bet it's been a decade since the last time I saw a melted cat. Lots of catalyst efficiency code, but none melted. Is the moon in Leo, or something?
I used to hear this a lot from customers (auto repair shops). Things seemed to go in odd waves. Coincidence? Probably. But another coincidence is that I heard it a lot, lol.
I've noticed that weird stuff seems to come in pairs.
Went years without seeing a Pontiac Torrent. Saw two in a month, both needed wheel bearings. One started disintegrating when I tried removing a bearing and ended up going to the scrapper, the other merely bent a strut. And popped the axle free from the CV joint, which I discovered about two seconds into the road test.
Two Subaru EJ255s with bad engines in a row, in the same month. These engines are rare here in not-mountainous country, but still, I had never seen a failure before. One lost a thrust bearing, the other lost an exhaust valve.
Both were in Bajas. The only two Bajas I'd ever worked on. I never saw any even when they were new...
I paid a shop to install a new clutch two years ago(wasn't doing it in my snowy/steep driveway) and they handed me big chunks of my melted cat. Big ole chunks. That poor cat is still going though, I guess.
ClemSparks said:I used to hear this a lot from customers (auto repair shops). Things seemed to go in odd waves. Coincidence? Probably. But another coincidence is that I heard it a lot, lol.
I spent 14-years in office equipment repair & it was definitely true.
The other thing was after you'd spent a year or two working on a certain brand/model & had learned its common failure modes, you'd get a call regarding the same symptom - but it would be a completely different cause, which you'd then start seeing with regularity.
I sell parts for stamping presses. Certain lube pumps went obsolete and I have to come up with suitable lube units to replace them. I will go months without doing one, then have ten in a week.
When I worked on cars it was the same way with gm fuel pumps.
I just work the parts counter at Napa, we seem to have waves of similar cars needing similar repairs at times as well. Like 5 Impala's spanning a 3 year variance all needing power-steering hoses so then we add extra to the inventory to have it, to suddenly sell maybe 1 in the following year. It's weird.
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