White Smoke Billowing From Exhaust After Repairs

[thegreendrag0n]

@ok4450

I have never heard of converter substrate getting into a cylinder

I’ve heard before that early-2000s Nissans have this problem, it was specifically the reason I avoided Nissans between 2000 and 2010.

This was discussed on this forum before:

2002 Pathfinder-Catalytic Converter sucked into engine?

After seeing Tester’s reply, I did some searching and reading on this. The best I can tell is Nissan’s QR25DE and VQ35DE engines, between 2002-2005, had their variable valve timing set to include EGR functionality. This momentary “pulling in” of some of the exhaust gas worked fine if the pre-cats were in good condition. However, if anything ever caused the pre-cats to begin to fail, the substrate powder would get sucked back into the combustion chambers, resulting in oil burning. It’s not cl…

VQ40DE on XTerra is a “big brother” of VQ35DE.

Here is some more from Nissan-specific sources:

Engine ate the catalytic converter stuffing

Catalytic Converter Turned to Dust