What are the symptoms of a faulty catalytic converter?
1 Answers
A faulty catalytic converter exhibits the following symptoms: 1. Engine overheating, lack of power, abnormal noises, and foul-smelling exhaust. 2. Disruption in the engine's air-fuel mixture ratio, leading to difficult ignition or incomplete combustion. If the catalytic converter is damaged, the secondary oxygen sensor cannot provide accurate data to the vehicle's ECU (Engine Control Unit), resulting in an excessively lean or rich air-fuel mixture. A lean mixture can cause ignition difficulties, weak driving performance, and engine backfiring, while a rich mixture increases fuel consumption, leads to incomplete combustion, and causes severe spark plug carbon buildup. 3. Increased exhaust backpressure and worsened emissions. Due to faults in the fuel supply and ignition systems, engine overheating and backfiring can cause the catalytic converter's substrate to sinter, peel off, and increase exhaust resistance, leading to poor emission performance and other adverse effects.