2006 Nissan Pathfinder has approximately 89000 mi and the check engine light came on so i took it to the dealer to see what the issue might be and was told that it was the Catalytic Converter as well as the oxygen sensor. I am not sure but my wife was quoted $1400 to do all including labor. Now i am not one to have a stock pile of money set aside to do this so i was wondering if i can just get away with just replacing my O2 sensors for now and not worrying about the Catalytic Converter until i can save money.... or should i just try to get them all done?

There have been a lot of documented problems with the internals of the catalytic converters shredding themselves. It has been documented with the Pathy, Frontier and Xterra 05 to 08 models. It happened in mine. There are a couple good vendors on Ebay that have them for a reasonable price. I think I paid about $340 for both of them.

If you are mechanically inclined at all, then this is not a complicated task. It is just time consuming. likewise, the O2 sensors are pretty easy. the two upper O2 sensors you have to reach through the wheel well to change, and the lower ones you can simply reach from under the truck. Do you know which of the O2 sensors that it was? you can get Nissan branded O2 sensors for about 145 each, or you can get the generic Bosch O2 sensors from Advance Auto for 67 each. They both work the same...

If you aren't mechanically inclined, you can buy the cats, and O2 sensors and then pay a local shop for the labor. Not sure what rates are around there, but here the labor would run you about 300 or 350. That would total out with the O2 sensors (Advance Auto), cats, and labor to be about 850. if you do the labor yourself, then you are really only looking at about 500. Either way is a fair bit cheaper than what was quoted by the dealership.

The reason that you really need to take care of the cats (moreso than the O2 sensors) is that there is the potential for the back pressure sucking some of the shredded material from the cats back into the engine. This has been known to happen, and the local dealership here has done 4 motor jobs in the last couple months as I understand it for this reason. That had me worried when I had the issue with my Pathy.

When I took care of the cats in mine, I had access to a hydraulic lift, which did make the job easier. I suppose it took me about 3 hours to swap out both cats. I did not change O2 sensors in mine. as soon as the cats were swapped and codes cleared, the O2 sensors didn't throw codes anymore. might want to do the cats first and then see if the codes come back for the other.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for you input.

i was told that i might need to weld the cats on? Or are the ones that you can get from Ebay bolt on directly?

mine are just straight bolt ons. I would shy away from anyone telling you that they are weld on only. there's not a good amount of space to be welding and there is a lot that can go wrong there not to mention air leaks and so on.