Hi
Own a 94 Turbo 850.
I have had no reply to previous post, which was rather hidden in a thread. Hence the new post.
Firstly, I live in Thailand, it is difficult to get satisfaction from dealers here. They have untrained and lazy mechanics who completely screw up everything they touch. So it might come as no surprise to you when you hear that when a warranty repair was done to my car (not a main Volvo dealer, I might add) they removed my faulty catalytic convertor and threw it away. They then welded in a piece of steel pipe in it's place. Great. ! There's more, but I won't bore everyone with that on this occasion, as I think I've fixed most of theother problems they caused.
The car makes a hell of a noise inside the car, as the CAT did act as quite an efficient muffler, it seems. And the fuel economy is lousy, about 14 mpg or less in city. I've tried all the appropriate action including the "law" but it seems like I have to repair it the car my own expense.
Now, Thailand has no emission controls - leastwise, nobody ever heard of any, so it seems a little pointless my incurring the expense of a replacement CAT when most of the buses and trucks here lay smoke screens for several miles.
A new CAT from Volvo costs 67000 baht which is about 900 US dollars here. There are cheaper CATS available, reputedly from about 6000 baht, these are Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese and not designed for this car, but it IS an option.
So, I wonder if anyone out there ever swapped the CAT for some kind of muffler? This would appaear to be a solution, one with a high back pressure to approximate that of the CAT would be good.
I've seen posts in tghe past from some people who fitted the straight pipe - they admitted they were riceboys and loved the noise, but even some of them changed their minds!
My car is fitted with only one O2 sensor, so there should be few problems from the ECU.
Any thoughts/advice/stories?
Thanks
Keith
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