So, after nearly 2 years of dealing with performance and fuel economy issues I am happy to report that my girl is finally recovering.

Right off the bat I'll say that I'm embarrassed that I missed such an obvious issue for so long. Moral of the story...don't be lazy and don't be in a rush.

Earlier this year the truck one day started having dangerous levels (in my opinion) of pining with anything less than premium. This went on for a few months and after running out of ideas... I fellow car guy at work said "the car is 23 years old, it's most likely the issue. Turns out it was generating excessive heat. This was 6-7 months ago.

A month or so later I had the car swapped with a magnaflow OEM fit. I started to do the swap myself but struggled with the bolts and my health issues... Now, here is where I messed up... With the excitement of finally being done with this issue, I just picked a random shop on a Saturday to do the swap. This was the first mistake, I was in a rush and should have waited to use a mechanic I trust.

When I first started the truck, she was louder but I chalked this up to it being a $650 cat vs an OEM $3000 one. Second mistake...BUT, this did improve the milage (from 17 to 19) for a few weeks at first so it gave me the false impression that things were fixed. From this point, the truck slowly went back to having issues, though the pinging was totally fixed. Mileage was all over the place, 16/17 where prior to these issues I had gotten her up to 19/19.5 on my regular weekly commute. Power just dropped off and she would just bog all the time...

After admitting defeat, I went to my trusted mechanic. Upon hearing the truck and smelling it, he instantly said "exhaust leak man". He did a smoke test and found TWO issues.

1.) The new cat was defective; the flange was slightly bent/warped so there was no way for it to mount flush.

2.) The shop that did the swap ruined all of the studs and never told me.

So, after he tried to man handle the broken studs out, he sent me to a muffler shop down the road owned by a buddy of his. His guys tried the welded nut trick for about 5 minutes and then apparently said "f this". Told me they busted out the acetylene torch and just melted those suckers out. New bolts went in, along with a new warranty replaced cat.

As soon as I left I could tell that the ecu was "relearning" as the truck drove oddly for about 5 miles, but even then I could tell it was improving. 30 miles later and she's running better than I can ever remember! No more hesitation! Plenty of power; pulls strong again! It's easy to spin a back tire if I punch it turning into the highway. I went from hating to drive my rig to loving it again. Sure they are not "fast", but they are not weak either!

I'll need to do a few tanks to see if mileage improves but I'm confident it will be better.

TL;DR

Don't be lazy like me, do shit the right way the first time...