Can A Catalytic Converter Be Cleaned?

hey guys I'm the 50's kid this is a 2001 Kia Sportage and I now know for sure that it has a bad upper catalytic converter and we need to replace it but I'm not going to be replacing in this video in this video I'm going to try cleaning it I've seen a couple other videos on YouTube about cleaning catalytic converters some of them have used soap and water some of them have used sodium hydroxide I know one video in particular recommends that you pour like a gallon of lacquer thinner in your gas tank and run that III I don't even want to address that video because that's so unbelievably stupid what I'm going to do is remove the catalytic converter from the vehicle and soak it first in I think first lacquer thinner because that's going to dissolve quite a lot of stuff and then I might soak it in sodium hydroxide overnight that will definitely remove quite a lot as well and then I will rinse it probably with a little bit of acetone that kind of cleans out that that will rinse water right out of there when I soaked it in sodium hydroxide I'll be soaking it in water and sodium hydroxide because you need to dissolve sodium hydroxide in water so I would end up rinsing it with acetone then I'll put it back on the car and so on and so forth but I want to talk about how we're going to test to see if the cat is bad before we even try things and how to test if it's good after we try things in some of those other videos people are fond of taking an infrared thermometer and pointing it at the beginning of the cat and the end after the cat to tell if the outlet temperature is a hundred degrees hotter than the inlet temperature that will tell you if your cat is technically working because basically if you see the same Inlet temperature as the exhaust temperature that means that definitely will tell you that it's not working but even if you see that it's a hundred degrees hotter at the outlet that doesn't necessarily mean that it is working you can have a cat that's 100 degrees hotter at the outlet and still not be working efficiently enough to do its job and pass it's an emissions test so that is not a valid test to tell whether a cat has is working or not in order to tell you need to hook up a scan tool that is able to look at live data and and you need to look at the downstream oxygen sensor and make sure it's not cycling up and down in fact even if you don't have that kind of scan tool you can still do that with a multimeter you can just unplug the downstream oxygen sensor stick a multimeter in not the heater circuit the heater circuit are the two blacks you want to stick it in the gray and the white or whatever the colors are the two different colors the two single colors stick a multimeter on there and just read the voltage because the oxygen sensors make their own voltage and you can just look on your multimeter if it's switching up and down then it's not working if it's a steady somewhat higher than 0.6 or something like that then it's working so that is what we're going to do in this video where I'm going to use my scan tool because I have it you guys have seen it in my videos before but if you don't have a scan told that's what you can use anyway enough talking I'm going to pull the cat and we're going to clean it okay we're looking at my scan tool and up here we've got short term fuel trim this is long term fuel trim this is the upstream oxygen sensor this is the downstream oxygen sensor what you're looking at here this is what a good cat looks like supposedly looks like the downstream oxygen sensor should be steady straight across upstream should be fluctuating up and down from rich to lean but this does look like a working cat and I did say that my cat was bad well here's how I know if I increase the speed of the engine you see that the downstream oxygen sensor starts fluctuating up and down rich and lean rich and lean that's one way that I know that this catalytic converter is bad the second way I know is by performing an ox propane storage test or an oxygen storage test propane enrichment test same thing what we're going to do is we're going to introduce propane into the intake I have my camping stove hose that I've taken the valve core out of and I'm just using this to sort of introduce a lot of propane the reason I'm doing this is because the the tip that I have for my my propane torch doesn't let out enough propane but if you have a big tip then you can just use that what you need to do is increase the speed of the engine and turn on the propane and what we're going to see is the upstream oxygen sensor is going to go way rich as I'm adding the propane and once I turn it off it'll drop lean and on a good cat the the downstream oxygen sensor will stay rich for a couple seconds longer before it drops to lean if they drop at the same time that's how you know that the cat is bad as well so let's perform that test increase the speed of the engine and open the propane I've got enough propane going in turn off the propane let's stop that right there so it stops moving you can see I turn off the propane right at around frame 395 if we look right here around 3.3 95 that's when it dropped lean as well so there's no oxygen storage in this cat cats just about dead those are the two ways that I know for sure that this is a bad cat I'm going to repeat these two tests after I clean the cat and see if we see any kind of improvement okay guys I got a two gallon bucket and I got the cat pulled out this is what it looks like this is the top of it there's the bottom so my intention is to use lacquer thinner and here in California I can't get the same lacquer thinner that the rest of the country can get I've got to have BOC compliance so basically it's mostly acetone so is yours yours probably still has toluene in it I can't get that anymore they put something else in it but I can still get xylene for some reason at the Home Depot on Hollywood Boulevard so hey I'm going to use that to make up the the rest of it I think this is only about half full so basically have almost nothing and this thing is so small that I almost think it could fit in a one gallon paint can and I might even go out and grab one of those it turns out I don't have enough solvent so here I'm going to do the xylene xylene and acetone those are basically the two most important solvents that I want to use here xylene is totally nonpolar acetone is polar aprotic what else can I put in there I've got a little bit of denatured alcohol just to make up some bulk we're almost to the top there I also bought a little more acetone for 12 bucks that was all I spent really for this particular project so I'll just use that I just want to submerge the honeycomb that's what's important now I would have expected a bunch of black gunk to dissolve and come out into the solvents so far that hasn't happened so that's not looking good so far for my let's dissolve the carbon and/or ash and soot theory so anyway let's let that soak for a couple hours we might be I even brought a lid to keep the solvents from evaporating acetone evaporates pretty easily so let's leave that for a little while obviously you've noticed I'm wearing my chemical resistant gloves very very important you use these especially for the next step for the sodium hydroxide step don't want to touch sodium hydroxide with your bare hands that will burn you basically the same thing as touching hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid that would just be really dumb so I'll let this soak for a couple hours I don't have high hopes in this because if it was going to dissolve anything I would have seen it almost right away so we'll let this go for a couple hours see what happens and then we'll move on to sodium hydroxide okay guys it's actually been about half an hour I don't see any point to taking the solvent bath any further it's not really dissolving much of anything I mean if it did I would have expected this to not be completely translucent the way it is completely see-through actually so just kind of drain a little bit from this now this next one is just going to be plain soap and water just daun dish detergent the only reason I'm doing this is just so that somebody doesn't give me crap for not doing it you know don't really think it's going to do anything more but you never know actually look at that it's doing better on the on the cred hoo I already like that I'm glad I did this then probably almost certainly the the sodium hydroxide would have done the same thing and I think this is more this this is more the water than the soap this is the fact that the water is polar because we just soaked it in the other two kinds of solvents nonpolar and polar aprotic this is polar protic that's the third type of solvent water is polar protic so that being water being polar protic it's now dissolving everything that it would dissolve so I like that hey that's pretty cool so water might do a little something let's uh let's go the other way let's go down a little little concern that whatever kind of comes up and stay I like I think I want a little more water in here perhaps I just feel like I should have let the water bubbles settle down a little so we can see what we're doing here here I'm gonna get some water to add to that and I'm just using tap water I'm a little concerned about leaving steel parts in water for too long because they will rust I don't believe this is stainless steel I'm just talking about the outside here so that seems pretty decent to me one thing I want to point out here this is kind of interesting to me that this bottom side here seems a little more burnt out shall we say then this side over here and there's also a little bit of the honeycomb sort of missing there's like a little notch of honeycomb missing right along this edge and I don't really know what else to say about that other than that's interesting the bottom seems pretty good I don't know if we can we can see that any more light over here but I see some black floaty particles in the water who knows what it is so I think that's good enough I'm going to take this water dump it out in my sink not really concerned about it because I think a lot worse comes out of your butt so it's fine just going to go rinse this out of my sink and come back and we will do the sodium hydroxide let's take a moment to talk about shop safety be sure to read follow and understand the directions that come with your power tools no just kidding who doesn't love norm Abrams right but but in all seriousness you definitely need some rubber gloves make sure that you know the basically anything that you would use to clean an oven with okay chemical resistant rubber gloves important also our protection you don't want to splash sodium hydroxide into your eyes that will blind you also if you're going to do this indoors without ventilation a respirator is a really good idea if you breathe the fumes from sodium hydroxide they will burn your lungs trust me not fun now sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide either one will work you can get this on eBay they sell it for making soap or biodiesel not too hard to get used to be able to get this in the supermarket you know red double lush but I can't get that anymore in California at least maybe you guys can but I can't anyway let's go ahead and prepare sodium hydroxide bath so I'm sure nobody remembers this from their high school chemistry class but you're never supposed to add water to concentrated acids or bases it has to be the other way around you add acids or bases to water to dilute them now you might be wondering how much to use I don't really know I'm just going to use a little bit now here's the thing when you add sodium hydroxide to water it's going to heat up the water if you add too much at all at once it could have somewhat of a violent reaction so add it carefully add it slowly it'll take a little while to get dissolved just kind of going to add some you know what I mean no no that seems pretty good to me I'm using a wooden paint stirrer stick mix that around go ahead and get that going I'm probably going to need a little more I'm not giving you an exact measurement for this because there really is no exact measurement for it I mean we could prepare like a 100% saturated solution but that is absolutely overkill you can prepare a 10 percent saturated solution if if you want to do that see if I remembered you know I forgot to put my maximum eye mask on okay I'm not going to be an idiot putting the mask on because I can smell it I wonder what I sound like I think I sound probably - muffled I so if you want a little bit of a formula go ahead and weigh out 100 grams for every 1 liter of water that you use and that will make a 10 percent saturated solution 10 percent by weight just want to see how warm that is not very weak I might add a little more want to make sure it's nice and strong okay that's probably way too much but we're gonna go with that now I should have put my glove back on before I did that bad me now I can feel the container has heated up quite a bit so I think that's pretty good that's a that's another good barometer for you when the container heats up I think you you know you've added enough that you're you're actually going to get some cleaning action out of it I added about half the container not sure how much this is I think this is a 2 pound container so again I probably went way overkill I'm just going to let that sort of cool down a little bit by the way guys in case of emergencies you need vinegar in order to neutralize sodium hydroxide okay weak bases neutral weak acids neutralized strong bases cedam hydroxide is a strong base vinegar is a weak acid and you guys are getting all kinds of chemistry knowledge today okay it's looking good go ahead and submerge this sucker and we are nice and submerged great so I'm going to let that sit you know what let's just do overnight just cuz you know why not let's go I think I'm going to dunk it once or twice though get a little something rinsed out don't drop this it will splash you be very very careful that would be that that right there is probably the mistake that you will make if you're going to make a mistake is dropping that thing look at the nice sizzling we got going on anyway dropping that thing is is is the mistake that I foresee a lot of people possibly making so don't do that look at this sizzling action wondering if I mean nothing is aluminum right by the way never ever dunk aluminum in sodium hydroxide because it's going to begin to break it down this is definitely it's got to be a steel right you know what let's make sure that with a magnet yeah that's steel this is the part where you want to have your mask on okay my mask is on like to get a little more water in there be very careful here as far as why this is sizzling like this I honestly couldn't tell you I don't know if rust reacts with sodium hydroxide I honestly don't remember don't think that was a something I learned in high school chemistry so what maybe I was absent that day I do know that luminol reacts with it but as far as I know steel doesn't so so this is interesting to me so I'm wondering if it's the I'm wondering if it's this because this looks like it's reacting maybe maybe the coating on the outside of this shield is reacting so I'm going to take the shield off thinking perhaps that might be doing something okay again get it get a good grip on it dunk that in there so whatever these heat shields were coated with was definitely reacting there maybe it was just like the zinc coating or something who knows now I think whatever you know you can see my my solution here is discolored but I think it's discolored because of the reaction with the heat shield here whatever the chemical was alright it's been about three hours and I think I'm going to stop here I don't see much point to going any farther with this I think whatever is going to happen has happened so go ahead and rinse this out and you know what I believe it's okay to dispose of the sodium hydroxide down the drain because think about it it's just drain cleaner you know they sell sulfuric acid drain cleaner and they sell sodium hydroxide drain cleaner either caustic or acidic right so those go down the drain our septic system can handle that our sewer system can handle that so it's okay so I'll be pouring that down the drain all right we're all rinsed out the thing is water has kind of a high surface tension right so there's still a lot of water kind of trapped up inside the honeycomb structure you know water a the surface tension is what makes it makes droplets stick to the side of a glass right but if you just like ran acetone around that glass the acetone would rinse the water away immediately and then the acetone will just kind of evaporate away that's kind of how you would clean glassware in a laboratory right so since my solvent bucket is pretty much mostly acetone lacquer thinner all that other stuff I'm going to use that to just kind of ran the water away and we have more solvent I think it's actually either that or it's probably somewhat evaporated away I would think I use that extra acetone that I bought just kind of pour through there let that drain and see how a stone just kind of dries really quickly you can still hear that there's some on the inside so let that drip dry for a few minutes until I can't hear any more solvent inside of it I don't wanna I was thinking about taking an air hose and blowing it out but I don't really want to aerosolize the acetone too much it should be fine but I if I'm gonna do that I'll do it outside well I dare say she's ready to go back on the car okay guys I got the cat reinstalled and I got it nice and warmed up and let's go ahead and repeat our test let's increase the engine speed yeah looks like that was not a winner right there post cat oxygen sensors still cycling up and down so we're over one let's go ahead and do an oxygen storage test although I'm sure we know how this is going to turn out opening the propane and as we can see frame 135 about their dropped and over here about frame 135 it also dropped so no result on that 104 - looks like cleaning cats does absolutely nothing as I thought so there you go that's conclusive proof that cleaning catalytic converters does not work and we even had the best test case scenario here we had a cat that was working in idle and not working at engine speed and still it didn't work we tried three different cleaning methods we tried soapy water we tried solvents we tried sodium hydroxide none of it worked all of our tests came up negative so that's it pretty much if your cat starts to if you start to get an inefficient Catco if you if you get a po4 20 or zero for 22 that's it you need to buy a new cat no no doubt about it now if you you might be wondering you know there are a couple other people out there who claim that they've cleaned their cats and they've gotten it to work that you know and and here's my theory on that I'll see them say like you know I reset I clean the cat I reset the codes and they haven't come back and here's the thing it takes a really long time when you're in a situation like this and you're going to get a pee for 20 code it takes a really long time and a number of drive cycles for the engine computer to finally decide that the cat is is not fit as efficient as it should be I've been driving this thing around for a cut like a week or two now you know multiple drive cycles I go out during the day I go out at night when there's nobody on the roads and I do like a driving cycle and I could not get this thing to complete the catalytic converter monitor that's what's happening those people are using scan tools they don't know about the the engine monitors all they know about is you know is there a code or is there not a code so that is the situation with that so when you see people claiming that they've cleaned their catalytic converters it's BS okay this myth is busted and thanks a lot for watching guys

Channel: 50sKid

Views: 1,503,201

Keywords: Catalytic Converter, Clean Catalytic Converter, Sodium Hydroxide, Solvents, DIY, How To, Auto Repair

Id: L_QIRFUg8K0

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2016