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…

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.

@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.

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.

If the system at work doesn’t work out for you, call any chain auto parts store near you to see if they have an OBD-II scan tool they can loan you. Many places do. You just trade your credit card for the scan tool, run your scan, and they will print the codes found. Since there’s no cost, they wo…

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

Maintenance/Repairs

Caddyman February 7, 2012, 7:16am 16

A couple of tenths of a volt in output can mean the difference between a CEL glowing or not glowing…While a sensor with 100K miles on it may still perform within speck, a new sensor may perform just better enough to make the computer happy and not flag you for an emissions test failure…

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

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