Oakland
I'm house sitting for a friend in Oakland right now. Got here Wednesday night. Thursday night went to drive over to Eva and Tim's house in Berkeley. When I started up my truck it sounded like a hot rod! I looked under the truck and a 3 foot section of my exhaust was missing! They stole my catalytic converter! WTF? I was completely flabbergasted and flummoxed, to name a few things that start with F.
I drove my truck over to a safer neighborhood in case they wanted to steal the gate from my truck bed or something. The truck was so loud it was setting off car alarms!
The next morning I called up some muffler shops and found out that this was pretty common in Oakland. Apparently there are some people going around chopping the catalytic converters off of late-model Toyota pickup trucks (probably 4x4 so they're easy to get under). I guess they sell them to metal recyclers for the platinum, etc... that's in them. The guy at Ron's Berkeley Muffler Shop (great place, I'd recommend them) said that mine was the 3rd catalytic converter theft he'd seen that day! Apparently they only steal the old ones (more recycleable metal in them?) so I'm not likely to be a repeat victim (knock on wood). Also, the newer trucks have the converter above a frame member, so they're harder to get out. Doesn't help me, though.
They chopped off the mounting bolts and all that factory goodness, so it would have been like $1200 to replace everything to factory specs! Thankfully they could just throw in a universal catalytic converter and weld it into place for $200. They even gave me the pity discount for having it stolen in the first place. They had a sign in the bathroom listing the 9 common reasons why catalytic converters go bad, but I guess they forgot the most common East Bay reason. On the plus side, there's a good BBQ place across the street. Super nice people, and great ribs. Another recomendation.
At least I got a good story out of it. :(
I drove my truck over to a safer neighborhood in case they wanted to steal the gate from my truck bed or something. The truck was so loud it was setting off car alarms!
The next morning I called up some muffler shops and found out that this was pretty common in Oakland. Apparently there are some people going around chopping the catalytic converters off of late-model Toyota pickup trucks (probably 4x4 so they're easy to get under). I guess they sell them to metal recyclers for the platinum, etc... that's in them. The guy at Ron's Berkeley Muffler Shop (great place, I'd recommend them) said that mine was the 3rd catalytic converter theft he'd seen that day! Apparently they only steal the old ones (more recycleable metal in them?) so I'm not likely to be a repeat victim (knock on wood). Also, the newer trucks have the converter above a frame member, so they're harder to get out. Doesn't help me, though.
They chopped off the mounting bolts and all that factory goodness, so it would have been like $1200 to replace everything to factory specs! Thankfully they could just throw in a universal catalytic converter and weld it into place for $200. They even gave me the pity discount for having it stolen in the first place. They had a sign in the bathroom listing the 9 common reasons why catalytic converters go bad, but I guess they forgot the most common East Bay reason. On the plus side, there's a good BBQ place across the street. Super nice people, and great ribs. Another recomendation.
At least I got a good story out of it. :(
Labels: catalytic converter theft, Oakland
posted by Don at 11:59 PM
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