Glowing red catalytic converter: CA smog soon!
 

So as some of you may now I just got a new engine and have approximately 1800 miles on it. The car pulls strong, but it has intermittent power loss sometimes when accelerating and at high rpm. I've also had a misfire code come up once P0301. After reading much of the symptoms that it could be I looked under my car last night and noticed my catalytic converter was glowing red. The cat only has 30k miles on it and my mechanic whom built my engine said it looked great before he installed it. My car has a brand new fuel pump and bhr ignition kit as well as a cleaned maf and new spark plugs.

My real question is if my cat is bad is the dealership required to replace it? Before I got my new engine installed the dealership voided my engine warranty because it didn't have the cat installed on it at the time. Since then the engine has been rebuilt and the catalytic converter has been installed. Is the 8 yr 80k catalytic converter still available for me?

Also does a glowing red cat always mean the catalytic converter is bad. Also the car has a very strong unrecognizeable odor to it when driven harder.

Yeah, your cat is shot. You will probably have a very tough time getting a warranty replacement if the dealer already denied an engine warranty due to not having a cat at all. Legally, this is pretty clear proof of "tampering", which makes them entirely justified in denying it.

The dealer shouldn't have been able to void your engine warranty for no cat, but that's not really an issue at this point, as it's on record that you had the cat off at a prior point. Likely the low compression from the prior engine is what started the cat failure.

not trying to jack the thread but this is almost identical to my issue and i cannot start a thread yet. i have the rebuilt mazda motor with about 1200 miles on it, bhr ignition replaced airf filter, ess reset, new wires, plugs, maf switched with another car (for diagnosis, we pulled the cat down cat looks good to me and the mazda tech, even the exhaust pipe looks oddly clean. problem i have is so similar i get a cel flashing at high rpm ONLY if i duplicate a certain rpm condition getting engine to temp 1, and getting exhaust hot 2. this has been an ongoing 5 month thing and its not alwys flashing cel. and even with it flashing sometimes i can get it to push past and "clear out" with no power loss most times on the flashing i can not get past 6k until light goes out again. odd thing is this last time of flashing 3 times in one drive, it did not even store a pending code, dealer wants me to put stock coils back on and recheck. coming from the mazda tech usa line for the dealer they feel i might have a faulty or failing pcm do to not storing a code or even a pending. my cat is covered with heat shields so hard to see it all i can see is the o2 area and that is orange after a drive. as stated we pulled cat and it looks fine ????? pretty much stuck scratching my head as to were to go from here.

i would put stock coils in it too, especially if there is warranty involved. if they don't work, you can keep em as spares/resell.

the cat is actually supposed to be at like 1000F, and i'm not sure what temp steel/iron glows but the thing is hot on purpose.

put stock coils back in, especially when you are trouble shooting.

if stock coils fixes it, well there u go

if it doesn't, check ur fuel pump. yes, it does cause misfires as well.