12-20-2023, 02:56 AM
Coming from the land of catalytic converter theft, rest assured, your motorcycles are safe.
Converter thieves (they work in broad daylight, by the way), aren't going to waste their time on the miniscule amounts of platinum and rhodium in a motorcycle converter. They'll just steal the entire bike, take it to a secure location, and strip it for all of its parts, not just the converter.
These thieves don't work with legitimate scrap yards, so it wouldn't matter where the converters come from. I can see the attraction. My old work van stopped passing smog checks around 250k miles due to a clogged cat and a P0420 code. I bought and installed a new cat, and a legitimate recycler gave me $265 for the old, clogged cat. So, with 24 hours and a corless sawz-all, one could steal an entire trunk load of them and make some decent money.
Of course, within two weeks, my new cat was stolen. I built a new exhaust system that had a removable straight pipe, so that the next replacement cat could be kept on a shelf, and only installed for smog inspections. No need to give them another $900 gift.
Main targets for these guys are cats with the largest amounts of precious metals - Toyota Prius is the number 1 target, but commercial trucks and SUVs with large, easy-to-reach cats are also their cash cows.
I did get a little satisfaction after mine was stolen. A few days later, two blocks away at a neighboring office complex, a thief was found crushed to death under a Prius when his jack slipped. I hope it was the same guy.
Converter thieves (they work in broad daylight, by the way), aren't going to waste their time on the miniscule amounts of platinum and rhodium in a motorcycle converter. They'll just steal the entire bike, take it to a secure location, and strip it for all of its parts, not just the converter.
These thieves don't work with legitimate scrap yards, so it wouldn't matter where the converters come from. I can see the attraction. My old work van stopped passing smog checks around 250k miles due to a clogged cat and a P0420 code. I bought and installed a new cat, and a legitimate recycler gave me $265 for the old, clogged cat. So, with 24 hours and a corless sawz-all, one could steal an entire trunk load of them and make some decent money.
Of course, within two weeks, my new cat was stolen. I built a new exhaust system that had a removable straight pipe, so that the next replacement cat could be kept on a shelf, and only installed for smog inspections. No need to give them another $900 gift.
Main targets for these guys are cats with the largest amounts of precious metals - Toyota Prius is the number 1 target, but commercial trucks and SUVs with large, easy-to-reach cats are also their cash cows.
I did get a little satisfaction after mine was stolen. A few days later, two blocks away at a neighboring office complex, a thief was found crushed to death under a Prius when his jack slipped. I hope it was the same guy.