check engine light/ catalytic converter
 

Whats up you guys.? I consider myself a pretty deicent mechanic and knowledgeable guy when it comes to automaobiles but I know nothing about the rotory engine. My wife just recently bought me this car for fathers day. It only has 46,280 miles to this date. Now i have been driving it pretty hard. My CEL come on a few days ago. Took it to Advanced auto parts to get it scanned. Came back with a bank 1. He told me that was the front o2 sensor. So i said ok ill pick it up on friday. The next day when i went to start it up it was running like crap with no power. looked under the car to see my catalytic converter bright red around the rear o2 sensor. Now to my knowledge if a cat is clogged then something contributed to it being clogged. What should i check/ fix to prevent this from happening again or do i have a major problem on my hand. my car is a 2004 manual shift with touring package.

Get a new cat under warranty.
Then replace coil, plugs and wires, if you havent.
Usually coils and plugs should replaced around 30k miles.

Thanks alot, I will do that asap.

Ok, I took my car to the mazda dealership today and was told that my cat was no longer under warranty, dont know if thats right or not. The only has 46000 miles on it and its a 2004. But anyway does anyone have any suggestions on what type of cat to get?

The federal warranty on cats(in the US) is 8 years and 80k miles, if your car falls under that then they have to replace it for you. You can try and find out when your car was first sold and then figure out if you are still in warranty or not.

You really cannot prevent your cat from going bad, these cars seem to eat them up.

get a midpipe, much much cheaper than a OEM cat (from 200$ for a mid pipe(no cat) to 2000$ for a OEM cat pipe) check classifieds for used cat

Sorry it has been awoke since I updated everyone. Thanks for all the support. I have been out of the country for awhile, glad to be home. Got the cat rear sensor replaced yesterday and my wife decided to clean the garage and flooded my engine. Women, u gotta luv them. So I started attempting to deflood it myself, no luck. It was trying to start after about 2hrs, but I was getting frustrated, so I decided to order that bhr ignition upgrade and try it again after install. Will keep u guys posted on my progress.