Published: April 13, 2008 10:59 pm      

Using CatClamp can guard coveted catalytic converters

In less than half a minute, a thief can crawl under a car or truck, switch on a cordless saw and make off with a catalytic converter and the valuable platinum inside.

An unsuspecting motorist comes out to a parking lot a few minutes later and tries to start the vehicle, but it won’t budge.

What the thief has done in heisting the converter is compromise the vehicle’s computer system.

That scene is occurring with a frightening rapidity across the country, but an Ohio firm says it has the solution — the CatClamp, a cage-like device dreamed up by veteran welder Jim Dusa II.

Dusa is president of American Welding Inc. in Toledo, and has been selling his invention for about a year now.

So far, no customers have complained.

Dusa was led to invent the device when a national truck-rental agency approached him about producing something that would protect the converters, ordered by Congress nearly three decades ago as a means of enabling automobiles to meet emission standards of the Clean Air Act.

In recent months, thieves have been ripping off the devices by simply sliding underneath cars and trucks and applying a cordless apparatus to pry them loose. A typical theft takes about 30 seconds.

For about a year, Dusa’s company installed his CatClamp on rental trucks in the Toledo and Detroit areas to see if they could deter bandits.

“We had 100 percent success,” he says. “We haven’t even had a report of an attempt.

“It just makes more work than it’s worth to the thief. There’s too much low-hanging fruit out there for them to take something with this on. They go under there and may try to cut it, but it’s going to be a heckuva job with a saw.”

Initially, the rental agency suggested something on the order of a metallic fence around the converter to keep thieves from even reaching the instrument.

“But you can’t just weld bars over the bottom of a truck,” Dusa said.

“This kind of evolved into this bolt-on deterrent. We saw an opportunity. We put it on the Internet. Then we started getting a bunch of calls from people with smaller vehicles, Toyota No. 1, so we made a smaller scale size of it. We’ve been selling them all over the country. And we’re still at 100 percent success.”

Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, working with the West Virginia Automobile and Truck Dealers Association, sponsored a bill with Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, D-Marshall, aimed at frustrating thieves by forcing junkyards and other dealers to maintain sophisticated records of converter sales and demand a photo ID of the seller while recording his vehicle license. Gov. Joe Manchin vetoed it on constitutional grounds, saying the bill might have allowed “unreasonable searches,” outlawed by the Fourth Amendment.

Love insisted the foul-up came when the House of Delegates tinkered with the bill.

“I was kind of skeptical at first,” Dusa recalled of being asked to create a protective guard for the converters.

“But I’ve been working with metals for over 20 years. I know the ins and outs of the different alloys and what cuts and what doesn’t cut. I’m not saying they can’t get it off, but will they take the time? They haven’t yet. I would say it takes close to an hour to get it off. Ninety-nine percent of these guys have a cordless saw. That’s how they’re doing it. I’ve had reports of guys using a hacksaw. Now, that’s determination. You’re talking a lot of work there.”

For a little added measure of protection, Dusa stamps a vehicle identification number (VIN) in the collars that lock on the CatClamp.

If the clamp is extricated, and this is done by cutting on either side, then slicing through the two cables anchoring it to the frame, the thief is obligated to take both the CatClamp and converter away.

“When they do that, it has a VIN on it and they have stolen property,” he said.

“That thief is marked. It has that security device stamped in all four corners of the thing. It’s very intimidating when you get it on the vehicle.”

A CatClamp runs about $300 for cars and $400 for trucks.

“We’re in the process of putting a marketing plan together,” Dusa said.

For now, the clamps are available at the firm only, reachable at CatClamp@AmericanWeldingInc.com.

Dusa says his company can turn out some 1,500 of them a day and the demand keeps growing.

“It’s turned into quite a thing,” he said. “I’ve got people calling me from all over the country. It’s nice to be able to help people. Some have sent back responses, saying, ‘I can sleep at night now.’”

Dusa isn’t one to let initial success rest on any laurels, however.

“I’ve toyed around with the idea of putting a GPS locator on some of the bigger cats, but that’s down the road,” he added.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com