losiglow

iTrader: (1)

Just throwing this out there in case someone finds it useful. I had to do my emissions this month and ran into a few problems with KTuner being installed as well as the RV6 HFPC's. First, if you use KTuner, and you've removed any of the CEL codes, make sure to uncheck them and reflash the ECU prior to having the emissions done. If not, they'll show up as "not supported" which will be a red flag to emissions testing. I had disabled the P0420/P0430 codes since the HFPC's would sometimes trip. Once I turned them back on, the CEL immediately turned on.

I ended up trying the ol' laquer/thinner in the gas tank to clean the cats. I thought that might help since they've been installed for about 130K miles at this point. Against my better judgement, I poured a gallon of paint thinner in the tank with 12 gallons of fuel. I didn't have any "lacquer thinner" so I just used paint thinner. Why the hell not. Be careful not to get it on the paint though. I was concerned about the usual things - o-ring, seals, fuel pump, gas tank liner? whatever else might be eaten up by paint thinner. But I figured that most of the ingredients in paint thinner are also in gasoline such as toluene, naptha, xylene, mineral spirits, etc. So I threw caution to the wind.

Well, it could be coincidence or the trick worked. No more CEL. Took it in, passed emissions, all done. Maybe I destroyed something along the way. I suppose I'll find out later down the road.

I don't condone this trick. Try at your own risk. With the HFPC's, even a small loss in efficiency will likely trigger the P0420 or P0430 code since those crop up if cat efficiency drops below the pre-defined value by even 5%. I'm guessing that's where it came from to begin with.

Teddybear

Good to know. I've been eyeing HFPC's for a while now. It's only a matter of time before my original oem goes.I didn't know they could throw a CEL.
Thankfully my region no longer does emissions, and before the program was completely retired, it was just an ECU plug in test, so it was a joke in the first place.

losiglow

iTrader: (1)

Ours is only an ECU plug-in. No more sniffer test. But the ECU seems pretty sensitive to inputs from the downstream sensors. I tried a variety of "tricks" like using defoulers but it never worked. I'm not sure if the paint thinner caused the emissions to run a bit cleaner for a while or if it was a permanent fix. Either way, it's not something I'm going to practice unless I encounter the same problem next year.