The acid wash technique worked. Here are my SMOG test results before and after. Remember, this CAT survived a leaking head gasket, 260,000 miles of operation, wildly bad chronic fuel trim problems, and it was showing the P0420 code as recently as last weekend. I will update the OP with technique details.
2012:
A couple days after this test in 2012, I got an O2 sensor code.
2016:
2018: