Catalytic converter

I understand that this part may have a 70K approx warranty on it from manufacturer. You might check if you have a low mileage explorer.

To cut a long story short, I wasn't able to ascertain exactly how you can deduce if the cat converter is actually bad or not.

In terms of replacement, it's a bolt on part, at least on the 4WD Sport version. So, you can easily replace this yourself. I used a combination of stainless steel bolts/nuts from hardware store, and the ones I could order from Ford. Used a lot of penetrating oil on old bolts. Pretty straight forward to change.

I got lucky and snagged my new motorcraft replacement one off of ebay.

Paul

I had a cat go bad on an '82 Firebird I once owned. The big tipoffs were a dramatic loss of power, and a loud hissing sound when I accelerated. This was in the late 80s, but I got a replacement cat from JC Whitney for about $90. The Pontiac dealer wanted $300. It bolted right on and worked fine...and it did pass smog. Don't know if JCW still sells replacement cats, but that's an avenue to try.

Kevin

Who said they may be bad?? what DTC (diagnostic trouble codes) came up

You said '96 "AWD" this would mean a V8 engine which means you have 4 catalytic converters, two upstream and two downstream, so which one is bad?

Looking at my '96 Ford factory manual and my own '96 V8 Explorer, the two upstream cats are one piece assemblies that include sections of exhaust pipe before and after the cats, so you can't just replace the cat itself, but you can replace the whole one piece assembly left or right branch as needed, in other words it is not a "Y" pipe. The V8 has dual exhuast up to the muffler.

The two downstream cats also have short exhuast pipe sections but they are much shorter. The added headache here is that the rear ends of the two separate cats are joined to a single flange that to that bolts to the muffler inlet, this flange turns the two cats into a one-piece assembely, so the two downstreams cats must be replaced as an assembly.