My wife’s car has the check engine light on and she was told by her mechanic that it was the catalytic converter going out, to ignore it. I am thinking that I ought to be able to build a jumper for the sensor and fool it into thinking that it is working, reset the check engine light and wait till i…

Since the light is on except when there is no problem, your only option for getting rid of the light is some black tape over the lamp. The problem with that and with ignoring the light is that you will never know when it is telling you of a more serious pending problem that could become more seriou…

You can’t jump the O2 sensor connector to turn the light off. The O2 sensor produces it’s own voltage signal to the computer. So if you jump the O2 sensor connector the computer won’t see any voltage signal and will keep the Check Engine Light on. Tester

There are rumors out there that putting the downstream O2 sensor on a spark plug de-fouler will trick the system. Just rumors mind you.

The down-stream sensor CAN be spoofed, but it’s tricky and hardly worth the effort. I would REPLACE that sensor and see if that doesn’t cure the problem…Oxygen sensors don’t last forever…

Me, I would look at the signals coming out of the sensors before I replaced anything.

A jumper won’t “fool” anything. The ECU will still not see the proper signal and will trip the light fantastic. Like Circuitsmith, I’d look at the sensor outputs before changing anything. I found a cool site on how to interpret the O2 sensor output signals Perhaps it’ll help. http://www.aa1car.com…

Thanks Everyone. I checked at work today and we do have the connector and program on the computer for the stray car that wanders into our shop. I think I’ll check it out this week and thanks for the O2 sensor link where I can interpret the signals. Now I feel better educated at what might be happ…

By the way, I will report back what I find. Thanks again.

Just as a word of wisdom, the cat signal is bad but it did not go bad by itself, but because it was made bad by another pre existing condition. Beat me whip me make me sign bad checks! The cat can only do so much, but the essence of the question is to find why the cat cannot keep up.

Can I disable the catalytic converter sensor on my wife's car?

Maintenance/Repairs

MikeInNH February 7, 2012, 2:45am 10

@caddyman - Oxygen sensors don’t last forever…

I’ve replaced only ONE…and that was because the guy who did my clutch forgot to screw it back in tight. Outside of that…NEVER had to replace one…even after 300k miles. While they may not last forever…they sure to last a long long long time.

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Can I disable the catalytic converter sensor on my wife's car?

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