i have a 99 milly s, with 70k miles. picked it up about 6 months ago and have been having some troubles with it. smoking on start up, real sluggish, and bad fuel economy. drove for the longest time with no cel. light finally came on so i had local ford tech check it for me. came back with a p0421 code. tech told me that it is a cat problem and that i need to go to mazda. my question is about the cat warranties. i worked aat ford for a while and covered cats 8 years, 80k miles. does anyone know if this applies to mazda or should i try to find a set on my own, dont wanna pay mazda price for cats, sorry i'm too cheap. thanks for any input.

 

P0421 is for right bank cat efficiency. The emission warranty for Mazda is 8/80 so should be covered ok there. However....There is a TSB 01-003/01 that might direct your dealer to replace the rh downstream O2 sensor as they have been know to be overly sensitive. Doubt that is the case given your mileage and the smoking but they may want to do that first which will cost you out of pocket as the O2 sensor is not covered. Hopefully they will not know of the bulletin and go ahead and put a warm up CAT on for you.