Catalytic Converter Maintenance: Enhancing Vehicle Performance

Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 21st edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Catalytic Converter Maintenance: Enhancing Vehicle Performance".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "Tuesday Tech Tips" to see everything published to-date.

Catalytic Converter Maintenance: Enhancing Vehicle Performance

John Gardner: Your car feeling a little sluggish, or perhaps you have a lack of power? It could be due to a clogged catalytic converter.

Welcome to this AMSOIL Tech Tip. It's all about the catalytic converter, my friends. Let's talk about what it does. It takes those gases like hydrocarbons (HCs), runs it through there, and out comes H2O (water). Carbon monoxide comes into this, and out the other side comes carbon dioxide. Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) go into the catalytic converter, and out comes nitrogen and oxygen separately, so you're not doing any damage to the atmosphere.

How does it work? Well, it's all those precious metals you're hearing about: rhodium, palladium, and platinum. Very valuable pieces here. What's going on is as it passes through there, a chemical reaction happens, and when it happens, it changes those states, and it comes out as clean gas.

Now, what's going on? You actually can test these things. How do you test them? Well, they're like an oxygen storage container. If you blow heat on a fire, it's going to get hotter from the inlet to the outlet.

So, you can take a pyrometer, you can shoot one end, and then you could shoot the other end. You should have an increase in temperature from one end to the other, going up a little bit because it's taking that oxygen, it's blowing in on that fire, and it's getting hotter. Or, you can go down and get a back pressure gauge. The back pressure gauge, you just take out the oxygen sensor, screw it in its place, crank it up, and look at the pressure. At idle, you should have about 1.5, at 2,000 or 3,000 RPM you want three PSI or less. Back pressure is not a good thing.

But Len, I wouldn't dream of messing with an exhaust system without spraying the bolts first, lubricating them, or you're going to end up with broken bolts. I can guarantee you that.

Len Groom: Yeah, that and that's always the case when you work on exhausts. It's rust, and you have to deal with it, whether you're in the northern states where things can get rustier, or where you are, you've got to deal with it. And for that, we've got our metal protectant, and that's called MP. This is designed to get in there, it's very solvent, and it'll dig into those threads, it'll dig into that rust, and it'll actually freeze those bolts if you spray them 24 hours prior to working on it.

John Gardner: That's a great idea. What a tech tip right there. Now, I live in Florida, salt water; you live in the snow with salt. You got to protect it as well. You have another product for that.

Len Groom: That's correct, that would be the MP HD. So, before it rusts, if you want to take care of it, you would apply this to it. Uh, case in point, if you wanted to store a trailer, you'd spray the hitch or you'd spray the safety chains, anything that you didn't want to rust for a period of storage, we'd recommend this product. It forms a real protective coating on that metal, and it sticks.

John Gardner: Now, rust is a four-letter word you don't want.