Fix the Wife's Car! Toyota Rav4 - P0420, complete brake job, and headlight restoration.

all righty folks welcome back we're inside the wife's 2007 toyota rav4 instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree she's got a few codes anytime littell anytime type up got my helper in the back seat okay pío 420 catalyst system efficiency below threshold p one five seven eight brake system well that's interesting i am not familiar with that code huh alright i pulled up some live data here so these Toyota's are a little bit different than what we're used to with our domestic cars instead of having a upstream and downstream Oh two sensors they have a a wideband o2 or air fuel ratio sensor on the upstream and then a regular OH two sensor on the downstream but what we're looking at is basically no activity on the downstream o2 so we're just gonna kind of watch this thing and see how long it takes for that o to sensor to come alive and I've already driven this car once this morning so it's not entirely cold so I'll bring you back when we get some action on this thing it's been running now for about two minutes so I guess I should explain that the downstream o2 sensor is the one that monitors the catalytic converter I mean that's really it's only purpose and I think right now we can say that that co2 sensor is junk we're we're at four and a half minutes it's actually been more like six and a half minutes because it was about two minutes before I actually pulled up this graph and we still have zero volts on that o2 sensor so I looked up the specs for the original Denzil co2 sensor and it says anything over four minutes with no action on the o2 sensor means that it's it's no good okay folks we finally got it so after about 11 minutes the o2 sensor finally comes alive you see we have constant voltage so there's nothing wrong with the catalytic converter this car needs no two sensor simple as all right let's talk about this po4 20 code for just a minute I'm not worried about that p15 7/8 code that breaks system code I'm guessing that's something in some kind of anomaly on these Toyota's when you set a code in the PCM you also get codes in the ABS module the BCC module or the VSS module of stability control vsc whatever it's called the cruise control module so basically when you have a code in the ECM or the PCM it's going to lock out all those systems and sometimes you get a bunch of weird codes and it's it's hard to sort out what's important and what's not but let's talk about this Pio 420 so a po4 20 Pio 430 those are catalysts efficiency codes so the 420 is Bank 1 the 430 is bank 2 this car only has one catalytic converters so we only could ever get a Pio 420 so the way the system is set up here's your engine now the exhaust is going to come out and it has an upstream o to sensor it goes through the catalytic converter and there's a downstream o2 sensor and the car the PCM uses a catalyst monitor to basically monitor whether or not the catalytic converter is working and it uses the information from the downstream o2 sensor and compares it to the upstream o2 sensor to make a decision on whether or not the catalyst the catalytic converter is actually working efficiently and it's kind of hard to interpret on this car because on this car the upstream o to sensor right here is a wideband o2 sensor it's an air fuel ratio sensor so instead of showing this normal switching pattern like what we would see on a domestic car like a GM most older Ford's Chrysler's whatever now some of those are going to air fuel ratio sensors - but this is what we're used to seeing right so it's switching constantly from rich to lean so lean to rich that lean to rich whatever and it's looking at the downstream o2 sensor and saying hey does it mirror what I'm seeing at the upstream o2 sensor and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding of how the catalytic converter works is that the converter the catalyst inside this converter you know it's a chemical reaction the chemical reaction is actually powered for lack of a better sense by the switching of the the exhaust mixture from rich to lean so the catalytic converter you know it stores up oxygen and then releases that oxygen and in the process it's gonna smooth out the rich lean switching of the exhaust and when we get out of the catalytic converter we should have basically a steady voltage and the catalytic converter needs this switching from rich to lean in order to actually function so if we just had you know a steady air fuel mixture right here the catalytic converter wouldn't actually work but under steady state conditions so like at idle or you know a steady cruising speed the the injection system is constantly switching from rich to lean the period of this may be like once every second or somewhere in there and that's causing the catalytic converter to store and release oxygen which basically makes it work so the way that the PCM knows that the catalytic converter is working as it watches the downstream o2 sensor and it waits for it to basically reach a steady state and if the catalytic converter is storing and releasing oxygen properly the exhaust gases that leave the catalytic converter should be consistent should be steady should not be switching back and forth from rich to lean so once the car starts up you're gonna have the upstream and downstream o2 sensors basically making the same having the same behavior and then as the catalytic converter warms up it basically turns on and this pattern of the downstream o2 sensor should steady out and the catalytic so the catalyst monitor is watching this behavior and it's making sure that it reaches this steady state within a certain amount of time and it's probably different for every vehicle and there's a lot of other criteria I'm sure that go into the catalyst monitor I don't know a hundred percent what the Toyota is looking for but it's something along these lines and if you never reach this steady state then it's gonna throw this po4 20 now we know from watching the graph data that the once the o2 sensor on this car comes alive if it does basically show a steady state coming out of the catalytic converter but what I'm guessing is that the downstream o2 sensor is basically showing zero volts during the time that the catalyst monitor is supposed to run so the catalyst monitor is looking at it and saying hey I'm not seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing here so let's throw a Pio 420 what I don't understand is why it never shows any other codes for the downstream o2 sensor I guess the programming just isn't smart enough to know that you know zero volts out of the o2 sensor for a certain amount of time should set some kind of other code but whatever that's up to us to figure out I guess so anyway the PIO 420 is a catalytic converter code but in this case it's not caused by the catalytic converter it's caused by the o2 sensor I'm pretty confident about that if you want to know more about this just go checkout scanner Danner he does tons of great videos about catalytic converters he's big into to testing them with propane you know I don't know what he calls an oxygen starvation or oxygen enrichment and you know monitoring the o2 sensor that way now in the old days when we had obd one systems there was no downstream o2 sensor all that we had was the upstream o2 sensor that was basically switching the thing back and forth rich saline and we just assumed that the catalytic converter was working but when they came around with obd ii that's when we had the downstream o2 sensor and we could actually verify that the catalytic converter was doing what it was supposed to be doing so if you have an obd one car you know that the ECM really does not know whether or not that the catalytic converter is working so all these codes are just related to emissions that this has no impact on how the vehicle actually runs so I hope that kind of clears that up there there's lots of good videos out there about how the o2 sensors work and how the catalytic converter is monitored by the o2 sensors you know checkout scanner dinner or or diagnosed an or some of these guys and there's lots of weird things that can happen you know like if you have a crack in the exhaust manifold allowing exotic oxygen to come into the exhaust that can fool the downstream o2 sensor and cause all kinds of problems blocked catalytic converters can cause all kinds of problems malfunctions in the upstream or downstream o2 sensor causing you know phantom4 po4 20 codes to come in so I guess what I want to say is if you had the PIO 420 code you know don't just assume that your catalytic converter is bad you have to you have to do your homework and you don't need a fancy scan tool to see all this stuff any obd2 reader that can do live data should be able to show you whether or not your you have active voltage on your upstream or downstream Oh to sensor well I've got my helper here making sure the toolbox doesn't roll away next well pump up all right I'm gonna have to talk to OSHA we can't put the car on the lift without with the dog inside [Music] what does that feel so weird oh he's a little tight stand by folks [Music] come on I was just gonna wing in OH - sensor into this car because 100% confident that that's the problem what suppose we ought to do a tiny bit of testing and if there's one thing I've learned about YouTube said if you don't show it on the camera no one believes that it really happened so here's the test for y o2 sensor this is a heated Oh - sensor the two wires that are the same color almost always are at the heater circuit so now my meter set for resistance 8.3 ohms across the heater circuit so there's nothing wrong with the heater in this o2 sensor that is not the reason why we're not getting action on the o2 sensor sooner the o2 sensors bed we don't have a peel one for one or whatever you know Oh - sensor heater code so I just I don't have any suspicions that the the heater is the problem the problem is the o2 sensor so I guess we can hook up a test light to the other end of this plug and verify that we have you know sufficient current you know current carrying capacity through this connector but that's a waste of time I'm putting a new oil T sensor in it so I think I was trying to do a tally of how many o2 sensors I've put in this car pretty sure the factory Denso sensor was replaced once under warranty then I replaced it with a Bosch then I replaced it again with a Denso factory Oh two sensor that's this one right here and I'm gonna replace it for the fourth time with an NG K so we'll get a little sample of every manufacturers out to sensor and it looks like it's the same plugs are good to have the same whatever it is m18 thread so yeah that's where we're going another thing I don't like about this NGK the cord is a little bit shorter hey yeah are you cold yeah way inside so the sensor comes with a little bit of goo on the threads so we should be able to just pop this guy right all right well having a look at the brakes these pads are getting pretty thin but the biggest problem is here on the inside so you see that kind of bizarre wear pattern on the the inside of the rotor there and then I don't you tell on the camera but that pad looks like it's basically brand new so you may have a bad caliper you know like a sticking caliper so yeah we got to do something about that I think we're gonna just do a complete break job on this car cuz I could feel you know a little pulsing in the pedal when we drive it so it's probably time there's there's some life left in the other pads but this wheels got to be fixed so probably have a bad caliper pin or something will pull apart and grease them at a minimum and if we have to we'll replace them so let's do a brake job [Music] Oh okay well I guess the caliper is not seized it moves pretty freely so yeah [Music] [Music] oh boy the old brake lines are looking pretty crusty pretty crusty what in the world is going on here [Music] okay well I'm thinking I'm thinking we got our good out of that brake pad right there but you see the inside one is just like brand-new so something wasn't floating the way it should have been floating [Music] yeah I mean I lubed the pins every time I do a brake job on this thing so that's not the problem I don't know we must have some rest jacking underneath of the little clip here keeping this pad from wanting to go where it should go let's froze right in there yeah just to say [Music] drills are in the top drawer left side I don't know it's not that bad yeah so the insides been doing basically nothing at all luckily some nice guy put some never sees on the hub here so the old brake disc just right off wonder that was so the only thing on this channel that gets more negative feedback than my worn out boots are these foggy headlights so today we're doing something about it oh no more stupid comments who you will not see until sometime in April maybe I wasn't decided yet thanks coronavirus it's like I got myself a full time shop assistant alright so we got to do is clean up these caliper brackets but the thing is gotta be careful with these things they're kind of like exhaust manifold flanges and even if it looks like you got it clean chances are you don't really have it clean because all you're doing is polishing the rust so here's the test and a nice kind of sharp cold chisel here see how what used to be shiny just flakes off so you gotta get down to actual metal so if you guys watch South main auto there it go what he always does is put these in the sandblast cabinet and that works pretty well the other thing that works really well is a needle scaler now if you don't have any of those just chipping it with the cold chisel does work pretty well or if you can get a really aggressive file usually that will work too I just blasted these real quick in the San Blas cabinet but you can see I still have some spots here where it wouldn't quite get through all the all the scaly rust no it sounds pretty good at work okay so now pull these pins out I'm gonna hit these on the wire wheel real quick just to clean up the rust around the boots caliper slide pins are cleaned up we're gonna put those back in now for years what I used was this stuff so glide from Napa love this stuff it's a silicone based grease and you'll see right here of the many uses brake parts prevents pad squeal eliminates caliper sticking I never tried it on a fan belt that's interesting anyway this is what I always used to put some on the caliper slide pins shove them in they're good to go a little bit on the backside of the import pad a little bit on the fingers of the caliper on the outboard pad everybody's happy but Eriko has been using this Permatex ceramic brake parts lubricant and he seems to be very happy with it so I'm gonna give it a try I've never used this stuff before but if it works for him it oughta work for us it is kind of pricey but it looks cool nice and purple so don't go crazy on these caliper slide pins because you can basically hydro lock them in the bores and that's not good [Music] okay now we're also going to be using these CARQUEST gold wherever brake pads don't have much experience with these I've been a big fan of the Napa gold brake pads but my local auto parts store is a car quest not Napa and I guess a lot of shops around here using these they haven't had a lot of complaints but when it comes to brake pads it's one of those things where once you find something that works you know you're very hesitant to change because you know come back some brake jobs can get pretty pricey yeah it doesn't take very much for people to be unhappy now the slightest amount of squealing or squeaking or whatever and they're gonna be right back in the shop well I guess we'll try and see how it works comes with new clips seems like more clips I won't we need but yeah to figure that up [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right so I figured out why they gave us 40 11 clips there are different widths so yeah can you see it there are different widths on the inside so mycalpers take the large the wider ones [Applause] hold on we got to show the before-and-after so don't go don't go bananas on the other one just yet is it on it's on alright so I am following a nineteen step procedure and cleaning my foggy headlights and I already got in trouble because I already got it wet but they're pretty terrible they're as old as the car and step one is to make sure they're clean so this is the passenger side one I've already done the driver side one and we're hoping that I can see better at night know the real motivation is to prevent all these comments on the YouTube okay sorry to prevent all the comments on YouTube but for me it's so I can see better while driving in it so she's got the left side done at least done enough to make her happy yep so good enough all right Lee polish away all righty folks its installer odor so what I like to do is use some anti-seize right here on the hub because typically when the rotors seize onto the hub they're gonna see is right here at the pilot so a little bit of anti-seize goes a long way you saw I took it apart the rotor just fell off that's because of that anti-seize we're also going to use some of this stable rust stopper pretty much the same thing as fluid film close that down just don't get it all over your parking brake shoes if you can help it so got us a new rotor this is a painted rotor pretty fancy [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah the other site was worse I think all right I saved this little rubber plug out of the old rotor that's poor your parking brake adjuster but nobody ever uses the parking brake so pretty much no reason to ever have to adjust it [Music] okay before you push the piston back in the caliper like to give her a little love with the file here now a lot of newer vehicles the caliper Pistons are phenolic so they're actually basically plastic but these are metal alright looks pretty good I bought this fancy Lisle piston compressor I was just used to prepare a channel locks are a big C clamp before basically we just want to grease up anywhere that the there's metal-to-metal contact because if we get rust in there we don't have a good a good surface then that's where we get squeal sit right folks here's the right-side caliper on the rear axle I've got a little bit of a snag here the boot is torn pretty well pretty well jacked up here really so we need a caliper because I'm sure I can't get parts to fix this one so yeah let me see if we can get one of those same thing but different up here on the front use my flat flat headed pry bar here or just to back that caliper off a little bit well I guess while I'm working I can give you guys my two cents about brakes you know every mechanic has done a ton of brake jobs and you start to see little things you know little patterns and I'm assuming that it's probably mostly specific to the area where you work but what I found in this area okay so that caliper looks good just good because I want to replace any more than I have to so you see the pads are pretty much gone up here and there's there's very little left anyway what I found in my area is that first of all you're never gonna get better pads and rotors than what you get from the factory so the first set of pads and rotors are always the best so as far as pad slapping you know just replacing the pads and not replacing the rotors what I found is usually with the factory rotors the first rotors that you get on the car you can pad slap those at least once a lot of times you can do it twice no problem but after you replace the the rotors one time so you know you you're now on aftermarket rotors what I found is that you can almost never get full pad life out of a set of brake pads without replacing the rotors so I'm not that if I'm saying that clearly so I guess what I'm saying is if you have aftermarket rotors and aftermarket brake pads and then you run those pads until they wear out and you just replace the pads typically speaking you're gonna get some kind of you know pulsation in the pedal or you know what they call warping of the rotor before you wear the second set of pads completely out now if you have a brake lathe and you turn those rotors those aftermarket rotors usually you will get full life out of the second set of pads now most people don't turn brake rotors anymore well shops don't have a brake lathe my local auto parts store does have a brake lathe and they will turn brake rotors I forget what it costs it's not that much like 20 bucks to rotor and you know a new rotor you figure there's at least 40 maybe 50 dollars so it is still you know sort of economical to do that if you do so choose problem we have here is that you know the corrosion is so bad that usually the the rotors are pretty sketchy anyway so a lot of times it's better just to replace the rotors and not have to worry about the liability but where I found it's nice to turn turn rotors and term you know especially turn brake drums is on old weird stuff especially big trucks like medium duty trucks because you know the rotors for some of those trucks are over a hundred bucks yeah not much left of those so it's a good thing we're doing it so these rotors really aren't too bad I could look up the minimum the minimum thickness but I think you could turn these rotors and be plenty safe but like I said it's not usually worth it so I guess what I'm saying is it you know pad slapping is okay as long as you know you have good quality rotors but typically with these aftermarket rotors when they start to get thin they start to kind of warp or distort or whatever and it's been my experience that you rarely get full pad life out of a second set of pads on an aftermarket set of rotors well nobody in the area has a are you serious the second I started talking they hurt the furnace kicks are alright nobody in the area has a right rear caliper for a 2007 Toyota rav4 so on hold so tomorrow let's almost 4 o'clock now so I guess that's okay this is the first tub I've had that actually has some rust on it okay same routine on the front caliper there we go the pins are not the same front to back so you got to make sure you get that right okay the other big difference with the front caliper is that the the pad actually rides against this face right here this notch isn't isn't as important so the pad sits in here like so so it actually come on there's actually a gap here where the clips gonna go and then the pad actually bears against this pad right here and the clips look like this my mission one looks that way boy I better put these anti-rattle clips into okay now pads are gonna go in like so but there's an anti-rattle clip looks like this and it's going to go it's gonna go on the side opposite of the force of breaking so if you think about the caliper bracket oh how's it go goes like this on the wheel and the brake the brakes it's right here and clamps on the rotor and it's going to be pushing against this face right here so the anti-rattle clip needs to go there we go so I know a lot of people don't use the anti-rattle clips but I think it's a good idea you know you don't want that thing banging around up there driving you crazy and they come with the hardware kit so you might as well install them [Music] all righty folks got us a new caliper or it's probably a remand caliper most likely a car dome and it comes with a new bracket which I didn't know if it was gonna have a bracket or not but we've got it so we might as well use it so I'll go ahead and strip this old bracket off and move our pads and Hardware over and get this little guy installed so everything looks correct I think we're good to go the bleeders on the top side so yeah should be good and most importantly the boot is new in good shape so I know this one has an aluminum piston which i think is kind of interesting I'm pretty sure the other one is steel so I always like to check the slide pins on the new calipers this one looks good I have seen these before that we're dry no Lube at all so I might throw a little bit more on this one it's not quite not quite slobbery enough in my opinion all right torque the factory spec hahaha man these guys at Toyota I got it figured out it's all 14 millimeter on the banjo bolt that's nice I mean they could have easily been Bendix about it and made us get a different size socket or sock different size wrench but they were nice well not so fast there fella anybody see what I missed I forgot to install the anti-rattle clip [Music] so I'm not sure this is like an anti-rattle clip / a squeaker I'm thinking it's got to go in like that otherwise it's going to hit remember the other ones having build pads having a anti-rattle clip alright fellas don't mind me first break job ever apparently somehow I put the anti-rattle clips on the front calipers or the front pads in backwards so this little tab here is supposed to go on the inside and that is your squeaker and the you know the the fold and the anti-rattle clip supposed to be bulged up on the outside so rookie mistake so in case I wasn't clear here's the brake pad and here's that anti-rattle clip slash little squeaker so I had it put on the wrong way this pad surface is gonna wear down all the way to the backing plate and you can see with this you know big bend in the clip it's gonna be it's gonna be squeaking well before she's due so it's supposed to go like that [Music] okay Japan ready ah it's pretty clever Japanese they're always thinking yeah I mean it really looks pretty clean so I don't think we need to go go bananas on that [Music] [Music] [Music] I think I know anybody in Seattle Washington I doubt it well you see folks this is the kind of crap I'm talking about whoever remand this caliper sent the banjo bolt with a 12 millimeter head so now what used to be a cool feature of it all being the same socket size just got kicked right in there right in the pants so I'm not putting up with that we're going back with the old bolt nothing wrong with it so the next time we replace this caliper we won't have to walk two steps to a toolbox to get the different size socket draw the line somewhere folks all right torque that the factory spec hoes are down okay now I need my lovely assistant to help me bleed these brakes however you can do it without dying is probably fine no we're young we'll be fine oh yeah no worries it's all right okay time to bleed some brake everybody always goes bananas when I don't put a hose on the bleeder so here we go well uh maybe we'll just let the gravity bleed this for a little bit mmm why not all right lady push your brake pedal down a few times you pump up the brakes there's a feel firm at all okay push down let up push down but up pushed down let up push down that's it folks looks good no more air alright that's it you're all done [Music] [Music] okay we'll send that back to China where I'll try a new tool four and a half quarts yes so did you just leave the oil in there all the time well you can leave the as long as you use it only for fresh oil then it's not really gonna be dirty even if there's some oil in the bottom it won't hurt anything so you won't clean it each time yeah you'll have to clean maybe have one for gear oil or something in the other one friend you know that's the theory that's why I bought two you used to follow files are terrible no I just follow the directions on the bottle and pour it in oh yeah that's how we get oil all over the top of your engine I may have to loosen the top cap in the engine please I was in the engine I can't see see that better than a funnel or what [Music] she's not convinced people not convinced but I like it I think as anyone that's about four times as big for doing these stupid power strokes 14 courts should be a good enough for our initial fill you all have windshield washer fluid do you have a funnel do I have a funnel we just went through this whole rigmarole about how terrible funnels are now what do you want there you go have at it no it does not hold a full gallon so don't don't overfill it at least I don't think it does make a liar out of me no yeah that's why I thought a little bit less than a gallon or it's a whole gallon I don't know why anybody watches these videos I have no idea what I'm talking about no idea oh yeah you don't show it it didn't happen right folks they have it perfect headlight restoration he did better than I could that's because you weren't gonna do it no I wasn't gonna do it but I'm glad we did it now we can alleviate all of those negative comments now the big question is if we upgrade the lighting in the shop I get some new boots and we keep showing these restored headlights what are people giving complain about oh they'll find something yeah they'll find something so you check it your check engine lights still going to be on again yes I did change the LT sensor but we won't yes so you can roll it back and forth on the lift I always leave them in neutral we will not know if the check engine light is fixed until the catalyst monitor runs so we're gonna have to go through a drive cycle so you have to drive it for a while and we'll check it again and it should self clear hi folks hope you can see with all the glare but the downstream o2 sensor just became active after about two minutes so that's that's pretty normal that's what it should do so nothing wrong with the circuit or the ECM or any of that stuff it just needed an o2 sensor and what did I say we're on the the fourth low two sensor now maybe the fifth so I don't know why why it's so hard on downstream o2 sensors but it certainly is so I'm sure we've got this fixed but we'll have to wait for the catalyst monitor to run in order to clear out that peel 4/20 code so she's gonna have to drive it for a while go through the drive cycle and then it should itself clear if it doesn't we'll just go ahead and clear it as long as the monitors run we're good to go Max and I are out for a little shakedown let's make sure the brakes are good before we give it back to her so we'll do a couple of kind of quick stops here get the pads bedded in a lot of tribalism about how to you know properly bet in brake pads I don't know what the right answer is just drive it it's my my opinion is fine but whatever I'll make sure you got good brakes before you give it back to that the customer especially a customer is important as your wife this is an easy brake job like I said and you know there's not much to it but I thought it might be interesting for you guys and that caliper threw us a little bit of a curveball but that's really not that big of a deal calipers kind of pricey for these cars that was $65 but some of the GM cars like the old Buicks and stuff good buy a whole caliper for those for like 15 bucks it's almost so cheap that you might as well just buy calipers every time you do the brakes all right guys I suppose that's it probably won't be much of a video I mean it's just a simple brake job but I thought it might be interesting for you guys I suppose I'll get a lot of flack about not opening the brake bleeders when I push the caliper Pistons back but where I live because of the corrosion generally the rule is do not touch the brake bleeders you're asking for trouble there so I just I just push them back and I've never had a problem I've never had a problem with an ABS valve or any of these myths that you hear about on you know on forums or whatever so I just don't think that's a big deal but tell me what you guys think leave me a comment you know if there's some kind of special sauce that you use on brakes that works really good or you have a special brand of brake pads he found works good tell me about it I'm always always open to ideas and like I said you know everybody can act does a lot of brake jobs so anything you can do to make the job go betters is you know money made it and time saved awkward time come on he's afraid we're gonna leave him shout out to my family Hey give a shout out to your family why I shout it out to my students okay she's hijacking the channel people

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 91,226

Rating: 4.9494057 out of 5

Keywords: mechanic, wife, car, toyota, rav4, breaks, p0420, p0430, check engine light, o2 sensor, scanner, scan tool, autel, live data, catalytic converter, catalyst monitor, brakes, caliper, clean, restore, headlight, fix, repair, replace, brake job, rotor, pad, clip

Id: YhzHy7aAWJU

Length: 64min 7sec (3847 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020