Recycle catalytic converter?

[ak96ss]

I just had someone on another forum offer me $30 shipped for the catalytic converter off my parts car, ostensibly so his 'university' could do research.

I asked him exactly what research could be done with a used catalytic converter of unknown provenance, and he essentially mumbled something to the effect of designing a new type of catalytic converter, and that that was all he could say. Hush hush, secret stuff, and oh, by the way, it is illegal for me to sell my converter to anyone else...

So I did some poking around, and almost all of his posts are to people parting out cars where he is offering to buy the catalytic converter.

I did some more poking around, and discovered that used catalytic converters are bringing some large change on eBay - like $180+ for a used converter off of a 325. Seems like crazy money to me, but then I found some web pages where companies pay you for your used cat so they can recover the palladium, rhodium, and platinum from it. The EPA doesn't want you to sell your converter to anyone for use, but I believe the restrictions for recovery are much less.

My question: has anyone used any of these companies, or otherwise sold a catalytic converter to a recycler before? Experiences?

[gazellebeigem3]

i sold five converters from cars i have parted throughout the years and left with 385 dollars cash money. The e30 325 cat went for the most at 100 bucks by itself. The best part is that not only did i get some money in my pocket, but i cleaned out a good part of the garage!! Oh and my experience was very good. I highly recommend it!

[nando]

http://www.adccatalyticconverters.com/site/792045/page/549324

E30s are large euro AFAIK

[PiercedE30]

damn, we sold like 30 cats at work to the cat man and he gave us over 4500 for it. E30 cats get us about 175 or so and the real pricey bitches are the V8 "bullet" cats. those suckers net almost 200 a piece. I think I had about 15 - 17 of those in the 30 cat pile I had made at work.

[Jscotty]

I didn't know that it was illegal to sell your cat to someone else. The junkyards around here sell them all the time. And for most cars they are quite expensive. When the mechanic suggested that I might need a new cat, the first thing that he suggested was buying one used.

[BDSax]

wow, and i threw one away.........

[Rigmaster]

I didn't know that it was illegal to sell your cat to someone else. The junkyards around here sell them all the time. And for most cars they are quite expensive. When the mechanic suggested that I might need a new cat, the first thing that he suggested was buying one used.

It's against federal law to sell a used catalytic converter for reuse. I doubt they'd go after an individual seller, but I've NEVER heard of a junkyard that sells used ones (except to the scrap guy).

Ebay is the place to sell them right now, just make sure to say that they are SCRAP and not for reuse.




PM or email me and I'll give you the name of a guy in WA who buys them for good $$$. Trust me, for what he pays, it's well worth packing and shipping them.

[thectrlguy]

F$%K!!! If only I'd have known earlier.....

[Jscotty]

This law must have been enacted recently because it has been my understanding that the only major issue has been doing modifications like bypassing the cat or tampering with it for performance purposes. And I knew that its always been a violation of federal law to tamper with the emissions but all that stuff about being reported to the EPA and facing imprisonment is CRAZY.

Can you imagine being in the joint doing hard time, explaining to bubba and his gang that you are in for tampering with a catalytic converter? Oh yeah.. you will be the baddest dude in your cell block. Nobody will mess with you.

So assuming that I drill a big fat hole through the top, bottom, and both sides then I could clearly prove that I had no intentions of selling it for reuse. But one thing that I think about also is that if someone is paying you over $100 for your cat, there's no telling how much they are making from the metals inside of it so I guess the key is to know how to identify and extract the precious metals from the unit and then finding a reputable scrap dealer that will buy it.

There is this group of asians in my neighborhood that goes around recyling computers and old CRT monitors so that they can extract the gold from the circuit boards. Schools are throwing away so many computers these days its ridiculous and my neighbors are right there to collect it all.

[MikeE30325i]

i know what i am doing with the cat from my 325es.......

[nando]

i know what i am doing with the cat from my 325es.......

it's probably worth more than the whole car.

[RobertK]

In the past 2 months I've sold 3 BMW catalytic converters.

M30 cat = $250
M20 dual cat = $202.50
M50 dual cat = $200

[MikeE30325i]

it's probably worth more than the whole car.

i would not doubt that.

[Dibo718]

Ive sold two in the past year and one fetched like $60 and the second one got $90, it all depends on the size and if the "precious materials" inside are still good...they just stick a q-tip thingy in there and give you the money..but hey i was just going to toss them.

[ak96ss]

Thanks everyone - I'll probably be going the recycle route with this rather than basically giving it to this guy so his 'university' can do 'research.'

Geez, what did we do before the Internet? :)