I pick up a new 05 wrx on tuesday last week. It had 107kms on it. I drove it for 3 days and the CEL went off. I took it in and they said it was a CAT problem but it drove fine and so he reset it and said it could be some bad gas or something and that if it happens again he would replace the CAT.

Well two days later the CEL goes off and I take it to the dealer and they are going to order and install a new CAT because that's what the code is.

Has anyone heard of this before. The car has 600kms (300miles) and they need to replace the CAT sounds odd to me.

I told my parent to get a subie and they put 220k kms (100k miles) so when I needed a second car I went out and bought one.

But this seems like a major repair after less than one week.

 

Ok so they replaced the CAT off the downpipe.

I drove it for one day 100kms (50 miles) and the CEL light went off again.

I was driving to work at the time and I drove straight to the dealership and handed the service guy my keys and left in an outback.

Today they said they were going to replace the rear CAT and the O2 sensor which had not been welded in place correctly. It was actually loose when the tech went to check it. Now the rear CAT is on back order of course and who knows when I will get my car and who knows if it will work.

Nobody has commented on my original post but I will continue to update if for nothing than therapy.

 

What code was the CEL? o2 sensor sounds more likely than a defective cat. WHy do you have the stock exhaust anyways??? Upgrade! Go catless! haha, have fun with the wrx

 

Code was P0420

I haven't even had the car long enough to do anything yet or the time to research what i should do.

We also have emission monitoring stations here. Every two years you have to get your cars air quality tested so i do not know yet if changing things would affect that