Friends,
The teensy, tiny racecar has been throwing codes. This has been a fairly common occurrence, and not unexpected in an eleven year old car, but why?
I mentioned the code to the guy working on the Jeep Grand Livingroom after he was done with its transmission yesterday, and the guy had a great story to share. He asked, “is it a slow catalyst code?” He nailed it. I’m getting codes P0420 and P0421 at different times, “P0421 – slow catalyst warmup” in the current incarnation, and he shared a story.
“You know the ethanol they put in gas now? What is it, 10 percent? Well, it keeps the exhaust too cool and the cat won’t warm up on time for the computer and it’s making codes pop up.” What? This is completely reasonable, I guess, although wouldn’t additional oxygenates make the mixture too lean and run too hot? Ahhh, the computer is screwing with stuff…
“So yeah, the car companies are pissed because codes are tripping on cars that are too new and the warranty work is killing them. I heard that GM is suing those guys, whoever they are in California, who set the gas rules.”
I’ll take this opportunity to point out that those guys are the much-hated and unelected California Air Resources Board, but we’ll get further into that in the Proposition 23 discussion in this week’s election guide. Come back for that, won’t you? Back to our story…
“The only thing you can do, once the ethanol kills your cat is to change it out. You have a Mazda? That’s gonna be at least four hundred. The Asians are really high, unless you get one that’s built here. Except that they outlawed aftermarket converters, so the prices have gone up and up…”
My recourse, that I mentioned to him, is to change the oxygen sensors first. Once I find out that this fix doesn’t work, then we’ll see. Maybe I’ll just keep clearing the codes.
Neat!
– bob