Ok so I ended up meeting the camrys weakness.. a puddle. Kinda deep, not too bad. However Im now worried that water got into the cat converter since I have yet to fix the damn flange [:@]. I noticed just an hour ago when Steph pulled off that the exhaust looked thicker thn usual. I hadnt really noticed it yesterday, and the puddle was about 4 days ago. Would a little water finding its way in perhaps kill my cat? I'd rather rule out other possibilities since it cost me $130 and I dont have that at the moment.

Input?

 

Too much ingested water cannot be good. Yet, the CAT does turn part of the exhaust gases into water vapor.

The material inside a CAT runs at temps as high as 1600 degrees. Ingested water turns to steam which expands, if enough steam this can cause distortion of the material inside the case and case itself. Cold water on very hot surface can cause rapid cooling and distortion of the surface.

The distortion can cause the structure inside the CAT to break down.

If this was enough to degrade your CAT's performance to a point where it no longer will pass a smog test, don't know.

Cold water on the outside of CAT is not good either because of rapid cool down.

 

yea thats true, the car was on for about 5 minutes leaving a restaurant when we ended up stuck in a puddle. Wouldnt have gotten stuck if I had noticed it, but I went too fast and I guess the water splashed up into the distributor cap, and I had no more power. Im hopin it wasnt enough to damage it, if any did get in there. Could it also have simply been that its getting colder here and condensation in the exhaustor something made it look thicker?