$250 for a hunk of rubber!?!

[Drake314]

It's unlikely that the broken intake hose caused your cat convertor to go bad. (I've had split intake hoses on most of the Asian cars I've owned and it never caused the cat to fail.) I recently changed the flex pipe on my '09. The cat converter is NOT in the manifold. It is in the first pipe that is farther back, rearward of the flex pipe. But beware - changing the flex pipe is a bitch of a job, because the flange connection of the two pipes becomes galvanized into one solid mass of rust. That means that if your cat is bad, you will need to replace the front flex pipe as well.

When this happens that the flange connection becomes completely rusted what is the best thing to do to be able to disconnect them? I ask this because I may need to change out the oil pan due to a possible leak in the gasket of the oil pan. I also have an 09 aveo and the flange connection that connects the oil pan to the catalytic converter is completely rusted over as well.