Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ
This also happens over a long period of short heating/cooling cycles, I'm sure.
I mean, seriously.. when I pulled my cat, it was so bad you couldn't see through most of the cells. I actually did a backpressure test through the O2 sensor port, and saw something like 2psi at idle. (Should have been less than .5psi.) This is what told me to pull the cat and visually inspect it.
Granted, that was for a cat nearly 20 years old, and newer ones aren't going to have that damage. But aren't they recommended to be replaced due to heating/cooling cycles damaging them after something like 4 or 5 years?
|
Your cat shouldn't be that plugged up, even after twenty years, unless it had to deal w/ too rich of a mixture that plugged it up. I have a 26yo truck and a 16yo car in the family, both w/ their original cats passing smog every two years, so they should last for a while if they don't get all coked up due to an overly rich exhaust stream.
That said, having smog every couple years means that I need to keep the emissions within spec, so a condition that results in an excessively rich exhaust stream would have to be fixed or I couldn't register the vehicle.