03 tacoma CAT replacement question

Hi all, first post hoping you all can help me out. I have a California truck but moved to Texas 10 years ago (best decision I ever made BTW) and my cat finally gave out. Needless to say the check engine light is on because of cat failure. Since I no longer live in Cali can I install a 49 state cat and get that light off. The difference in price is ridiculous.

Thank you!

 

Wait
Are u in CA or TX or elsewhere?

 

Im in Texas now. Bought the truck in Cali before I moved so its got all the Cali emissions garbage.

Thanks for pointing out my typo.. just went in and fixed it.

 

Pm sent

 

I'm not sure about a 49 state cat as I thought all the trucks were 50 state vehicles, could be wrong. If you have the 3.4, one thing to keep in mind is that that there are two versions of California legal cats for the 3.4l six. You need to look up which engine family you have. Either the information is not contained in the VIN or Magnaflow's webpage vin decoder isn't sophisticated enough to find it. If memory serves it's on a sticker in the engine compartment. My mechanic installed cats from the different 3.4 motor family/series whatever and the truck's computer never said Ready (I have a Scangauge). That's when I googled the serial numbers and discovered the existence of a different version of the cat. The shop replaced them and the computer signaled Ready nearly immediately. Maybe there's two different versions of a 49 state cat as well? The advice I received was if you're keeping the truck, buy the nicer cat; they last much longer than the inexpensive ones. Good luck and let us know what works.
<EDIT>: I found the info from a previous post: There are two different 3.4 engine families. VRM and VRH. I don't know when the switch over happened. When the correct cats were installed in place of the wrong ones, the system picked it up quickly. Both sets were Magnaflow, CA legal versions. And yes, they were expensive. My factory ones lasted ~290k miles.

 

Use a spacer to "trick" the sensors.....and in 2 more years you won't need to worry about them anymore. At 26yrs old your truck will no longer need the OBDII read for registration purposes in Texas anymore.