Just had my wife's sante fe out of town in indiana and it broke down. the mechanic shop that they towed it to said the timing belt had broken and they later found that the cam-positioning sensor went bad also. well we had that fixed. about 2 days later after only driving the car for about 2hrs. straight it lost just about all power. it would idle fine but not go easily at all. we had it towed again. This mechanic shop said we had a stopped up cat-converter and also found the 2 O2 sensors to be bad. After replacing those he said he test drove the car and said the more he drove it the worse it run. All the debris from the front converter flowed to the rear converter and stopped it up. Well I told the guy just to cut a slit in the exhaust line between the 2 converters so we could get home and then I would let my muffler guy look at it. Well it drove fine all the way home (bout 600miles). I took it to my muffler guy this morning to get a new rear converter put on and when he was done he said something is causing the front converter to get really hot because he says it is more discolored than it should be. So i am taking to my mechanic tomorrow to have him check it again. Any ideas what could be causing the exhaust to be so hot that i'm taking a chance on melting this new converter as well? fuel consumpsion seems to be bout normal and car runs fine. I'm at my wits end with this crap.

Dear audio,

Are you still under warranty, and I mean the 80,000 mile emissions parts warranty? Yes, you have something desperately wrong. The front converter running hot simply means you have too much unburned/incompletely burned fuel traveling to the front converter, where the converter is desperately trying to burn this to CO2 and water vapor.

Have you had Check Engine Lights (CEL)on for months? Your O2 sensors will trip a CEL code for nearly any malfunction. If you don't have a CEL, get your car's ECU log read at a dealer. This will give you a historical record of the different faults on your car.

Maybe you burned out the CEL light. (Don't laugh...my ex-wife burned out the low-fuel light on a Honda Accord because the light was on for months at a time)

Does your CEL light come on during the self-test function upon ignition start?

Byron

Yes the CEL comes on at engine start but then goes off like normal and has not come on during driving. One thing I failed to mention is the mechanic in Indiana informed me that the car has a crack in the exhaust manifold. I talked to another mechanic last night and he said that could be driving the computer crazy and causing my problems of the car sputtering occaissionally and the converter getting hot. And no the car has 112,000 miles on it so nothing is under warranty. My regular mechanic has looked at the vehicle numerous times and since it never throws a CEL he can't find the problem. I believe I will get the exhaust manifold replaced or fixed and see what happens.

When I replaced the engine in my '84 ford ltd I wasnt too swift in getting the VACUUM hoses in the right order....Cat converter went cherry red....cut a slit in the pipe before so I wouldnt burn out my carpet on the floorboard and went to a "real" mechanic. Hooked up the car to the "bear" machine, switched a few VACUUM lines and while I was there I had him re-weld the muffler...

don't know if this helps...but it sounds strangely familiar

grampy