Way back when, in the previous century, there lived a middle-aged man who had bought a shiny new mid-1970s Ford Pinto with the mighty 2.3L
4-cylinder engine.After less than a year, the car was not running properly, so he brought it to us at the Ford dealership. I traced it to a plugged exhaust, verifying by dropping the exhaust pipe at the cat and running the engine. It revved up immediately and strongly. Then I looked at the inlet to the cat and found this. The small, melted piece was from the inlet, where the gas hit the platinum honeycomb, catalyzed as it was supposed to, overheated it, and eventually melted it.
He wanted to save money in running it, and leaded gas was 15 or 20 cents per gallon cheaper, so he put leaded gas into a vehicle marked UNLEADED FUEL ONLY right there at the filler tank. Needless to say, the man learned that he had not saved any money after all, as the factory would not cover the problem under the warranty since he had knowingly used the wrong fuel.