Cat breaking up at 63K - Preparing for battle with Mazda
 

My car started making a noise last week, kind of like a jangling sound coming from underneath the car. I thought it was a broken weld on the exhaust. Took it to my local mechanic and he popped it on a lift. The sound was coming from inside the muffler system. He disconnected the pipe that leads up to the muffler and parts of my cat guts fell out. My cat is breaking up.

I understand that the cat is warranted to 80K, but what about the muffler that has pieces of catalytic converter inside of it? There is no easy way to get the bits out of the muffler, so that muffler should be replaced. The defective cat is the sole reason the muffler should be replaced, so shouldn't Mazda cover it? Is this a losing proposition?

Mazda should replace under warranty your cat as well as your final muffler.