kec789

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm thinking if it WAS the cat having issues I would probably be seeing the CEL again, right? Ivan's: Could you snap a pic of where the front 02 sensor is? Or tell me where it is? Is that a tough thing to get to and replace? OCEI77: The engine seems to rev fine while just sitting there. Seems to only struggle when under load, as in punching it or when climbing a hill. It does "feel" like a clogged exhaust though...

Hello all! I have an 06 Legacy 2.5i (non turbo) with 113k on it. I had a pretty big maintenance done on it 6 months ago and of course discovered it needs a new head gasket. The price he quoted to do that was outrageous so I skipped that and had him do engine oil flush, service the transmission, change a couple of belts, Air filter, etc, etc. I'm giving you guys this info in case that head gasket can somehow be the cause to my new problem. Things have been running great for the past while except for the occasional check engine light with the famed P2040 code. From most of my reading I have found that code can be related to a cat getting too hot and going out. I used my tool to reset that light and ran some good fuel injection cleaner and started running higher octane gas. (In fact, that CEL hasn't been on for a while.) Skip to now. End of last week, and into this week I noticed that under hard acceleration the car is just struggling to go, like something is holding it back. It feels like it's starving for fuel or air, or something. If I'm going up a hill it's even worse and struggles even more. Same thing if I flip on the AC. Now, if I'm just tooling around town and driving normally you really don't notice much of anything being wrong. But if you punch it, it will down shift and try to get a move on but again it's struggling. I didn't have the spark plugs done when I last had it serviced so I ordered some higher-end NGK's and did that this evening. The plugs that came out REALLY needed to be replaced so I got excited thinking this might cure my problem. I'm thinking bad spark, bad ignition, bad performance. I took it right out and up my hill and immediately noticed that didn't fix my problem. With the rest of my research, and with the CEL I have gotten a handful of times, I'm thinking my catalytic converter is toast. If this is the case is there any way I can test this myself or do I need a shop to do this? I know I'm probably going to have to take it back in but I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask. If it ends up being a bad cat what should I expect to pay? Is this something I can get done for 3-500 bucks or am I looking at something a lot more than that? I have no problem getting an after market one to save some dough. Is there anything else you guys would check? I don't really have many tools to do anything drastic but if there is something reasonable coast-wise I'm willing to try. Thanks for the help everyone. I'm in SLC, Utah and don't have a "car guy" I trust in this city. The last place I took it in to to have those services done did do a good job but they are expensive and always list off a thousand things they "recommend" replacing.