Mechanics often find some bizarre stuff when they look over a customer’s car. Sometimes, it’s tiny animal stowaways. Other times, it’s evidence that a criminal left their mark on a Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax, like this one in Georgia. 

Once they had the Chevrolet Silverado up on a lift, they found a haphazard crime scene and an aborted theft attempt

A customer brought his 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax to Royalty Auto Service in Georgia. The Duramax was getting close to the point when the onboard computer would limit it to 55 mph. So, first things first, the team conducted an inspection. 

The mechanics found a bad injector, but that was hardly the wildest part of the closer look. At one section of the Duramax’s exhaust system, a deep, straight cut told a story. A thief had attempted to cut the catalytic converter from under the large diesel truck. 

Every year, thieves steal tens of thousands of catalytic converters. They’re relatively easy to access, valuable, and an experienced thief can cut one off an exhaust system in less than one minute.  

“Somebody attempted to steal the cat off of this. But hold on. It gets better,” the mechanic said. “Look under here.” The camera maneuvers around the cut section of pipe and behold: a broken saw blade embedded in the Chevrolet truck’s underside. “See the sawzall blade?” the mechanic chuckled through his question.

Clearly, the would-be thieves abandoned their attempt to get the Chevrolet Silverado’s cat after breaking the blade clean off their cutter. “They gave up,” the mechanic said with a smile. “They gave up when the sawzall blade broke.” 

“At least they didn’t cut the wires,” he said. The criminals chose to unplug the sensors rather than cutting them like some catalytic converter thieves. But that’s where the good stuff ends. The site of the failed cut is too inaccessible for the Georgia mechanic to simply weld the cut. That means dropping the entire exhaust system to fix the long, deep cut.

“Not the end of the world,” he added. “It’s still way better than having to replace all of the parts.” Too true. An OEM replacement catalytic converter for a 2012 to 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax can cost $2,000 or more. And that’s just for the parts. Make no mention of the labor to install it. “Stop being thieves out there, people,” the mechanic joked. Now, if only people would listen.