Cataclean and EGR Clog Codes

What app is that? I can't even tell what tests those results are for.... (The second one, I see, refers to test ID 8E ... but I have to admit I have slacked off on memorizing my hexadecimal test IDs ....)

 

The car does lots of self-tests ("noncontinuous monitors") on lots of things, EGR being one of the things. OBD-II mode 6 is the way to look at the test results for all those things. Each family of tests has a module id, and each test within a module has a test id. EGR Monitor, Bank 1 is module ID 31 (hexadecimal) and test ID bd. It will be reported in units of pressure (often kilopascals, though some scan tools will show psi). Catalyst tests, I think, are MID 21 or 22 (hex) and I'm not sure of the TIDs. I think the test result unit for the catalyst O₂ Storage Capacity test should be time (seconds).

Those screenshots you're showing, neither one shows a module ID, one shows a test ID that I don't think I recognize, and they both seem to be reporting results in volts. I just don't know what tests those are.

 

Well, the very last one of those (EGR monitor test ID bd) is the only one I'm much familiar with, and 21.9 kilopascals is great, the sort of number normally seen right after a full cleaning.

The other tests there, I can't really identify. I haven't memorized the hexadecimal test IDs for the most part.

If the first one, catalyst monitor TID a9, is the oxygen storage capacity test, then it looks ok. But I'm not sure that's the test I'm thinking of.

 

It would be correct to look at the parameters recorded when this error code appeared.

Non-original catalysts cost significantly less and their service life, as you can see, is also short.

 

I don't think that could have been me. I don't know anything about interpreting those O₂ sensor temperature readings—other than that there is no temperature sensor either place, so they are estimates of some kind derived from something else, and both those sensors are heated, so the temperature estimates might be provided mostly for info on whether the heaters are working.

I watched a silly youtube video one time by somebody who thought a temperature difference between inlet and outlet told you what you'd need to know about the cat. He was using an IR temperature gun to read cat temperatures from the outside, and the silliest part was he used one of those IR guns that shoots a little red laser dot in the center of its averaging area, and he thought because he could sneak that little red dot through a tiny chink between some heat shields and brackets and stuff, the temp showing on the tool was really the temp of the exact place his little dot was.

 

Just dirt piling up on the engine around them? Well, they're in sort of recessed areas and engine compartments get dirty.

Happily, it's not as if stuff building up around the outside of the injector affects what happens inside it.

It is worth trying to blow out or clean up before removing an injector, so the dirt doesn't fall in the hole.