Catalytic Converter Theft Protection
Stories about catalytic converter theft don’t seem to be as prevalent in the news these days. I’m not sure if that’s because the problem has become less frequent or because the story ran its cycle and is now considered “old news”.
My van has a 2” lift and sits on 33’s, thus access underneath is relatively easy, with plenty of room to roll around under the van on the creeper when required. This is a great feature for maintenance, not so great when considering security.
The Sprinter’s Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) is located immediately upstream of the Catalytic Converter (Cat). When a thief steals the Cat on a Sprinter, he/she doesn’t know the difference, thus both are typically taken. Both are expensive and both can have long delivery lead times. Besides being out of service for the time it takes to obtain the parts and make the repairs, I have heard of $10k being the bill to replace both and to repair other associated damage when this happens.
Theft of the Cat has been an issue on my mind for several years, especially when parking at trailheads and leaving the van, something we often do. Recently my neighbor scared off thieves who were in the process of cutting off the Cat from a van parked on the street one door down from my house on a nice quiet residential street, this prompted me to action.
Researching various protection schemes and devices, I finally found this one to my liking. I know that a determined thief can cut it away, but not without spending a lot of time and making a lot of noise, both things they don’t want.
https://www.sprinterpitstop.com/skid_plates_hields/catalytic-protection-shield-sprinter-van
Sold by Sprinter Pitstop located in San Diego CA, they prefer to do the installation themselves. I’ll typically use any excuse to drive down the coast to San Diego and the area around it, but in this case, I simply didn’t have the time so I ordered the shield and had it shipped to me.
Installation was time-consuming but fairly straightforward. I had to go through several iterations of fitting the shield into place before identifying and using a center punch to mark the final mounting locations. The shield isn’t heavy, but working on your back and by yourself are constraints that add time, constraints we all know well enough. This is one of those jobs that can be done in a quarter of the time after doing it once, thus the term “the learning curve” applies.
The shield attaches in six locations via tabs that are bolted to the underside of the van. Five of the mounting points were via 3/8-16 rivnuts, the sixth was attached utilizing an existing bolt. If you are interested in installing this shield, I think the best way for me to illustrate the steps is to show pictures of each mounting point. Besides, who here doesn’t like pictures?
Here are pictures of the shield, both top and bottom. Nice job of fabrication!
First I had to determine which attachment point would control the layout. This took a bit of moving the shield around to determine interference points, but I finally identified the Passenger Center mounting tab as being the one I had to establish first. Here it is looking straight on, the raised portion at the center of the bracket is where the rivnut needed to be installed in order to ensure that it would seat properly.
Once the location was established, I had to identify interferences, in my case there were two. First was this rear driveline support bracket:
Next was this welded pin that was utilized to support an electrical connector:
The other issue I identified at this time was that the two front mounting tabs did not make contact with the mounting points when the back four tabs were mounted. This was easily resolved by measuring the gaps and stacking 3/8” washers for spacers. Three washers were required on the Drivers Front tab, six were required on the Passengers Front tab. FYI, I glued the washers together prior to installation, this made the process of installing them in the limited space available much easier.
As I said above, there are six mounting points. Here I’ll show each location with a description of any pertinent points.
Mounting Location 1, Drivers Side rear.
This location utilized the driveline bracket bolt shown above. There was a 1” spacer present, in order to install the mounting tab here I had to make a new spacer that was 1/8” shorter.
Also, in order to get the front-to-back alignment correct I had to elongate the hole in the mounting tab, easily done with a rat tail file.
Here is the final installed picture, note the mounting tab is located above the shortened spacer.
Mounting Location 2, Drivers Side center. There were no issues with this location.
Mounting Location 3, Drivers Side front.
This is the location where the welded pin was located. I cut away the pin with a Dremel cut-off wheel, then cleaned up the area with a Dremel wire wheel before drilling the 9/16” hole to receive the rivnut. Note that in all cases I painted the newly-exposed edges of the steel before inserting the rivnuts. Also, this is the location where I inserted the stack of 3 washers as spacers above the mounting tab.
Mounting location 4, Passengers Side front.
This is the location where I inserted a stack of 6 washers above the mounting tab.
Mounting Location 5, Passengers Side center.
This is the location I described above as my control point. I had to bend the mounting tab up about 1/4” in order to align it with the slope of the mounting point, easily done.
Mounting Location 6, Passengers Side rear. There were no issues with this location.
All-in-all, I believe this resulted in a very clean installation that will serve its intended purpose well. Here is what the finished installation looks like, the first picture from the front and the other from the rear.
