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DTC P0420



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 30th 04, 04:07 AM
softball
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Default DTC P0420

I had my car checked at the parts store today after the check engine light
came on. The downloaded the DTC P0420 (Catalst Efficiency Below Threshold
Bank 1). What does this mean and what needs replaced or repaired. Thanks.
M

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  #2  
Old September 30th 04, 04:52 AM
Jim Levie
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On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:07:02 -0400, softball wrote:

> I had my car checked at the parts store today after the check engine light
> came on. The downloaded the DTC P0420 (Catalst Efficiency Below Threshold
> Bank 1). What does this mean and what needs replaced or repaired. Thanks.
> M

Taken literally that would seem to indicate that the Catalytic converters
aren't working correctly any more and need to be replaced.

--
The instructions said to use Windows 98 or better, so I installed RedHat.

  #3  
Old September 30th 04, 05:07 AM
softball
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how does removing them altogether effect the car and performance? Is that
an option?

  #4  
Old September 30th 04, 12:54 PM
Fred W.
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"softball" > wrote in message
lkaboutautos.com...
> how does removing them altogether effect the car and performance? Is that
> an option?
>




Your car, as most (all?) OBD2 equiped cars, has 2 oxygen sensors per exhaust
pipe. One ahead and one aft of the catalytic convertor. The error code
that you got indicates that the aft O2 sensor is not happy with the way the
cat is working and that the emmissions are excessive. If you removed the
cat(s) then the error codes would occur even more, not to mention that it is
very likely illegal because you would be polluting the environment.

Depending on your car's mileage and age, it is quite likely that simply the
O2 sensor is defective and not the cat. If the cat *is* bad, it is often
covered by a very long warranty, depending on where the car was originally
sold. Either way the best bet is to fix the car, not botch it up by yanking
the cats off.

-Fred W


 




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