The initial contact was on May 5th about a new catalytic converter, after settling on a price with shipping I sent Alex Duran (from Hialeah, FL) a money order. He said that he received it in the mail on May 10th and would send out the converter soon,along with the tracking number. After not hearing anything for a few days I e-mailed him on May 15th, his prompt reply was that he was out of town and would ship it on Monday the 19th (a full week later.) Here it is on May 23rd and I have no idea what is going on. No tracking number, no replies from two e-mails sent after that.

In my opinion I wouldn’t deal with this guy again, and recommend the same for you too. However, if he did send out the converter on Monday like he said and I get it soon I will post a follow up to this.

 

This guy finally sent me the catalytic converter, after a month of waiting. I had to threaten him with internet fraud to get his attention. Now that I finally have it, guess what? It is hollow, complety gutted. Looks like I will be filing those charges after all.

 

OK, get this now. He says he will not return my money untill he gets the gutted cat back, and he wants me to pay to ship it back to him. He is the one who screwed up and wants me to pay for it! I'm affraid that he will try and sell it to someone else. I hope all buyers check this out and avoid him since he is still posting ads to sell stuff.

 

Remember, technically gutting catalytic converters is illegal. You can use that to your advantage if youd like to.

 

Thanks, but I don't know that he was the one who gutted it. However it may be illegal to distribute gutted cats too, ahh the possibilities. But I will let the guys at IFCC deal with him now that he told me to go stick the cat where the sun don't shine!

 

I think it's actually illegal to redistribute used cats period, but I could be wrong. I do know that no scrapyard in town will sell you one.

 

As far as I have been told and from working as a tech, old used cats good or bad cannot be sold and have to be quarentined or something like that, and then destroyed. I think at least any repair shop would have to hold the cat for a certain time and have it cataloged as being removed on so and so date from a customers car and a new one replaced and the info sent to someone like the EPA or whomever. Now I seriously doubt too many shops do that and they just put a new cat on and toss the old one in the scrap pile, lol. But I could be wrong on any of this.

At any rate, you have an address, send "Bruno" to go knock on his door and collect, lol.

 

Thanks for the replies. In order to finally get the car through inspection I bought a Catco from Summit. $46 for a 3 inch, 3 way generic fit unit. It is exaclty what I should have done in the first place!! I actually feel pretty stupid for even thinking about a used one when I saw those prices. The only bummer is that I had to cut off the ball flange from my old cat and weld it to a 3" pipe, then muffler clamp that to that pipe and the y-pipe. For some reason the y-pipe is like 2.8xx so the front of the cat fits pretty crappy.

But back to the matter at hand here... he said that he dropped my money in the mail this morning. I'll wait and see about that!

 

Those actually work very well. I had a 2x2.5" in -> 3" out on a previous setup. It was the best sounding system I ever built.
No nasty smells, no rasp.

 

Just thought I would update this by saying that Alex has pretty much told me where to go. Of course I never got the money he said was in the mail, what a lier. Apparently he is too busy trying to run his own business to give a crap about how he screwed me. Also I see that he is still posting ads in the classifieds.

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=195518

 

I just wanted to bring this back to the top since I see he is posting more ads again.

 

It's one thing to screw up, lord knows I've had my share, after my last spell, I am very careful as to what I sell, the condition and all, he could have at least told you it was gutted, how could you not notice that? He should at least be kind enough to refund the money, and as for the gutted cat, he shouldn't even care about it or worry about it.I hope he does the right thing for you and gives your money back.

 

There is no chance of me getting my money back at all now, according to him the money has been in the mail for months already.

Also in one of the first e-mails he sent me, he said the cat was in like new condition and he would even refund me my money if it wasn't the right size. Go figure!