One day I took the car to get an oil change and left. When I got to the pharmacy and finished I came out and started the car. There was this rattling noise that sounded like it was under the hood. I took the car right back to the shop and asked why the car just now started doing it. They looked under the hood and couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from. I went home and spent a couple of days looking on the internet for the problem. There were no "idiot" lights that came on, no check engine, no transmission, no oil change needed.....nothing.

I took it to a shop and I was told it was the catalytic converter. I was quoted by several shops to test would be $100 so I went to a muffler shop and they told me $400 and showed me how the converter was pieces inside the unit because there were what looked like pebbles at the seal of the casing. They replaced it and I had to wait a few weeks for the pieces to eventually blow out the tail pipe.

The car had just hit the 70,000 mark! I called shops to see if I needed to have a diagnostic done and they said if no lights for service came on, there would not be a code that would come up so it was pointless to run any diagnostics to see what could be the underlying factor.

Took explorer to dealer for rough idling/no uphill power. Was diagnosed as bad o2 sensors, "fixed" for ~380 dollars, only for the problem to return in about 48 hours. Took back to dealer and now the catalytic converter is diagnosed as the problem. "lucky for me" it is under emissions warranty. Been waiting since then for the part. It's now January 2011 and "anticipated" arrival my be February. (we've already been thru multiple anticipated arrival dates, and so far nothing has been delivered) Ford Customer Service states the product is on back order and they can't give any estimation on when it will be available to ship. So my explorer has been sitting in the dealer lot for 3 months, now undrivable, because did I fail to mention when they took if for a test drive they completely stalled it out, it wouldn't restart and had to be flat-bedded back to the dealer....ugh.

If you ever need to replace the cat on your 2005 Explorer be careful which dealer you take it to. The dealer I took mine to would not try to find the part for me. After almost three months of getting attitudes and the runaround from the dealer and Ford I made two phone calls and found the part myself. I would give the dealer name and address but I don't want any more attitudes from the service dept. until they finally fix my car.After that I might punch the ass wipes in the face and tell the judge that I did my community service since the service writer is a smart mouth punk and I did refrain from killing him.I can tell that the after I report them to the BBB I will try to have the media report it.If I can get that done I will post information on which Connecticut TV station will report it.By the way I made two phone calls and found the part at a dealer 50 miles from dealer that has my car.