How to Diagnose Catalytic Converters When Check Engine Light Flashing for Ford Escape 2012

Flashing check engine light, codes P0430 or P0420, rough running, bad acceleration, or stinky smelling exhaust are all indications that there is a problem with the catalytic converter in your car or truck. In this article, we’ll shows you what is the problem and what does the catalyst do, furthermore, also offers some tips and suggestions for what you can do to handle a problem with catalytic converter.

The vehicle we need to repair is Ford Escape 2012.After scan tested the vehicle and found that we have a catalytic converter inefficiency code on the bank 2 side.

Although we don’t have any other codes, but there’s some things we need to check out. Under the hood we have to take a look at the intake system to make sure everything is tight.

Check to see if you have any intake leaks.

Since we didn’t have a fuel trim code so most likely we don’t have any fuel trim issues. If you do have, please click here:P0171 Low Fuel Trim. Everything up top visually looks ok, we start to check out underneath.

We start to check out the exhaust system to see if there’s any leaks. In below picture marked, there might be a little bit of leak, but that’s not a big concern.

But if you see any leak up here.

Especially in the gap,see if this gasket’s leaking. In this Ford, it looks good and nothing popped off or anything all looks good.

The reason why you have a P0420 or P0430 is because of the catalytic converters, they are located here

Exhaust gases are going to go through there, they’re going to burn more of the emissions out and then the exhaust goes through the tailpipe and out through the muffler. If the catalytic converter is not working properly, when you’re going to get raw fuel out the exhaust pipe and that’s what’s going to make it smell.

We take one of the cats to take a look at it.

How this is mounted in the cat, one side is the engine side, the other is what goes out the exhaust and out to the muffler. What we have inside here actually looks like a honeycomb or almost like a filter or a screen.

The exhaust gases go in here the unburned fuel, it burns up the rest of the fuel before it comes out the tail pipe. In this particular vehicle, there is an exhaust manifold that comes off the engine and mounts to this converter.

This vehicle happens to have a V6 engine most vehicles that have V6 or V8s are going to have two converters if you only have a four cylinder, you probably only have one.

You ‘re going to have an O2 sensor that is before the converter that’s monitoring what the engine is doing,the air fuel ratio what’s burning and what’s not

 

And then you’re also going to have an O2 sensor after the converter. That’s monitoring what the catalytic converter is doing.

The reason why you get these codes is because the computer was monitoring the back O2 sensor and saw that the catalytic converter was not doing its job.

The reason why you would have a P0420 or P0430, the P0420 is going to monitor this cat.

The P0430 is going to monitor another one.

The reason why you have a code P0430, please look in this converter, it’s actually hollowed out. There’s nothing in there.

The reason why someone hollowed this out was the engine was barely running, it was hard to drive. So someone hollowed this out so the engine could actually breathe. But in removing this you cause a check engine light and you’re polluting the environment. For the most part catalytic converters, don’t just fail on their own, there’s a reason why they fail whether there’s leaking oil getting into there and causing this to heat up you have raw fuel coming in there or even coolant.

If you’re replacing your catalytic converters, it’s a good idea to replace the O2 sensors and also the spark plugs. If you had a engine misfire, raw fuel is going to get in there and burn up your brand new cats.

So if you see that check engine light flashing, definitely find out what’s going on why you have a misfire before you burn these up.

In a word, if your engine’s running rough, you have lack of power and you have an egg smell coming out the exhaust, most likely you have a catalytic converter problem.

More cases about Ford, please refer to Ford Trouble Repair.