i had an aftermarket converter put on at midas put on about 4 years ago and there's been a p0420 code ever since. but yes, it has a cat. i replaced both o2 sensors at about 100k and the car has 116k on it now. the car runs great and get's 24 mpg in the city and no other codes come up (i have my own code reader)...
yes the o2 simulator is for the rear sensor.
yep, i went the defouler route amd it tripped the p0420 right away. but i think the o2 simulator will work as the o2 heater code hasn't tripped. the o2 heater shows up on my OBD11 scanner as: monitor status: incomplete. so it hasn't run enough cycles to clear it yet. i feel pretty hopeful. thanks fir the tip though bio. it's much appreciated...
yes, the simulator did work in keeping the CEL off. but with one stipulation if you have state emisions and that is that the O2 heater shows up on the scanner as a pending code even though the simulator keeps it from tripping the CEL light. hope this helps...
skip buying a new sensor unless the old one is bad. i have an aftermarket cat as well. put the money into the simulator instead. it seems that a lot of aftermarket cats trip the dreaded p0420 code (on foreign cars as well) even though they would pass an emisions sniff test. i'm in MN and we don't have emmisions testing...
you can pull out the rear O2 sensor if you want as well and plug it with an "O2 bung". i just left mine in place as it's not hurting anything and it saves you the hassle of taking it out...
