The catalytic converter conspiracy

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by Binder

 

You are spot on, Binder, I admire your automotive knowledge. Former Automotive Engineer here, and I will add to this, it is a conspiracy of the worst kind. Up until about 197 automobiles has high energy ignition systems, 30-50,000 Volts. And the octane level output was a great deal higher.

I can remember when my car would burn the tailpipe out snow white, and my engine valves would be clean after 50,000 miles run time. I had several cars in those days, pre 70s cars, that easily got 40 mpg highway all the time.

Enter the 1980s, everything changed. first was a lower voltage ignition system was installed on all American cars, max output: 17,000 volts. That is enough voltage to burn off 70% of the fuel in the combustion chamber. Enter lower octane ratings, and now you are burning about 1/2 of the fuel. the rest is captured in the CAT. Also in 1980, a built in flaw was placed into every car manufactured in America. I am General Motors trained, so I only know about their obsolesce flaw. Here is it:

If you look at a wiring schematic for a post 1980s car, you will see that the power wires and all orange, or orange with a black stripe. If you trace them out, they go to everything on the car that need 12 V power, and if you trace further, you will see that all the orange wires come together at a common point. So, when something happens...like the little switch that turns the dome lights on and off shorts because it got wet, or the cigarette lighter shorts out, or anything else, tail light, headlight, any short at all, the system power drops dramatically. The car will stall, refuse to start, light will not work, or grow really dim, I am sure you GM drivers have seen this effect before, right?

I know how to fix this in any GM car, but you will have to fix it yourself, Garages will not do this.

You have to remove the dashboard to do this. Don't freak out, it's a lot easier than it sounds. when that is done, take the wire bundle in your hands and begin to unwrap the wires, looking for the orange ones. You will find a place, under where the dash was, where they all come together. Unwrap that good, and get yourself a 50 Watt breaker from the local auto parts store, about $10, and a roll of electrical tape. Cut the wires off, one at a time, and bare the wires, and apply a ring connector. Place all the rings on one side of the harness on one pole of the breaker, and the rest on the other pole. Tape the harness up good, and reinstall the dash, making sure all connectors are plugged in and cables attached right. Start the car, and drive trouble free for many miles. Power increases, start ups are faster, lights get brighter, everything electrical works better. Takes about 4 hours for an experienced mechanic.

My son and I have repaired over 20 GM cars this way in our garage days. One Chevy dealer paid me $500 to do this for them, they said it would void the warranty, but told me to fix it anyway, and the money was mine. This fix works great.

Installing a new high energy ignition system will double your mileage too, MSD makes excellent replacement parts for most all cars. I have a 6A digital ignition system with a 45,000 Volt coil, and Bosch double platinum plugs and Accel racing primary wires on my 1990 Chevy G-20 van with a 350 V-8 engine. We get 42 highway, and 30-35 city, with no CAT, and stock throttle body fuel system. Next step is to install one of these babies:
HHO Hydrogen Generator

You are so wrong ..... The reason your tailpipes ran white was because of the lead that was in the fuel pre mid 70ish. Hence the unleaded fuel after 74,75 I belive.

Ignition systems, pre high energy ,aka "point systems "produce a voltage of 20,000 or less. High energy which came out in 1974 I belive on GM produced appox 40,000 voltage give or take. I belive some newer systems run as high as 80,000 volts or higher , you really dont want to get zapped by these.......They got higher not lower....

i thought catalytic converters simply turn nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide into inert gases.

I don't think it burns fuel...


You are confusing me OP.

reply to post by Binder


This is an excellent contribution to the world, well spoken.

I will remember this forever. I cannot believe how unknown this knowledge is!

S and F

Thanks OP. I haven't had a chance to research all the information and reply's yet, but this makes sense to this old gear head.

Thanks.

2 strokes are the real solution. Tons of power with nothing wasted. Evinrude and BRP are already light years ahead of the auto industry in making engines run on very little fuel and even Whiskey to boot. The U.S. Navy versions run on any fuel today. You can buy one for 20,000.00 lol.

A two stroke can bring both carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons down at the same time. In a four stroke you have to sacrifice one for the other and that is why NO new Four stroke outboards can be taken to Europe and ran, Europe don't like the fact that we prefer Hydrocarbon reduction over the one that can KILL YOU.

Growing up as a kid I was taught from a great mechanical engineer that the whole emission system on cars never worked. He removed all of ours and even made custom intakes for us.

"The Prize: Ten Billion Dollars!"

"The Mission: To topple a government and set up a puppet dictatorship."

"The Plan: Invade the country with a band of savage, mercenary soldiers, the dogs of war."

Great OP.

Made me think of the novel: The Dogs Of War, written by Frederick Forsyth in 1974.

The premise: Super-rich business bastard hires a team of mercenary soldiers to take over a small African country because of the secret discovery of...platinum.

From the novel: "And the particular reason why American consumption of platinum was almost certain to rise, even triple, by the mid - to late seventies, lay in that simple piece of metal the car exhaust pipe and in those dire words 'air pollution'.
With legislation already passed in the United States projecting ever more stringent controls, and with little likelihood that any nonprecious-metal car exhaust-control device would be marketed before 1980, there was a strong probability that every American car would soon require one-tenth of an ounce of pure platinum. This meant that the Americans would need one and a half million ounces of platinum every year..."

Paperback gold.

My last bike was modified to 1000cc world superbike specs.

Out came the cats. Out came the oil breather re-circulation system (aka burning oil vapour back in your engine again). Custom headers and exhausts were fitted. Any smog related devices were removed along with uprated cams, valve train modifications and gaskets. Air intake system modified, any smog stuff taken outta there and more effective filters and velocity stacks. Modified ECU was custom programmed (fuel and air ratios etc) on a multi exhaust gas sensor EC997 eddy current dyno.

After reading the manual for my bike I found that californian spec (not mine) zx10rs have big chunky oil catch cans behind the radiators and other weighty devices, to more strictly retain any remotely possible emissions - fuel, fluids, oils. Poor buggers.

One freed up, the exhaust coming outta the pipe on my bike was barely smelly and didn't make your eyes water straight away like all the other normal bikes, cars, busses and trucks. Something to be said about catalytic convertors and modern engines...

In fact it runs better on garbage than petrol, you just have to clean the container out often, and keep it watery to pass through the little orifaces. People in europe build, and use them alot, no problem. They even run helicopters on them.

BULL!!!

Prove it.

Helicopters? Now you really have to prove it.

Cats ar used just to make people feel better. Oh, the mileage has gone down, it must be working.

I blew out every converter I had and always got better mileage & performance.

[edit on 5/16/2010 by wookiee]

i think the cat legislation is simply law makers being totaly unaware of the facts but still making the rules because it suites the "system" more money for ignorance

Ive thought this many times, that perhaps science is too far ahead of the people in charge, and the "system" that needs to change, is who gets into these positions of power. If the best and brightest really were in charge, we'd be a long way from home.

reply to post by Binder


These are the first things I remove from ANY new vehicle I own as soon as I get it home. Then I sell them myself!

Vehicle emissions are a joke.

they dont put these things on abrams tanks..they dont put them on
humvees, apache helicopters....and they sure as hell dont have them on b2 stealth bombers... Why? because the emphasis here isnt the environment. It's all about money. We dump our nuclear waste on third world countries by making it into bullets, yet the same people care about the air? My ass!

So i cut my cat off and get my damned money back.
This is of no detriment to the car, or the environment. The car uses less fuel and makes more power. And I dont care what some beaurocrat thinks about that.

reply to post by autowrench


Hey autowrench sounds like we are on the same page. I have lots of friends who are combustion, and automotive engineers that build the stuff, and understand the physics behind it. Not just a UTI tech who is told what he should think, and scorned for daring to look outside that narrow little box. Of course the newer cats are good at doing what they are designed to do. The problem is that they no longer need to do it. The combustion heuristic can be controlled closely enough that the resultant exhaust is just as clean without a cat. It has been proven time, and again with stand alone systems like a mega squirt. Sure ICEs aren't 100% efficient not even close, but that has nothing to do with waste produced it has to do with how many joules of energy are converted to power to the back wheels vs. heat blow out the radiator. The AFR, and timing can be set at each load point in the PCMs addresses as to eliminate almost all unwanted by-products. Is it perfect no, but it's as good or better than the way we are doing it now by going the long round about way that uses extra fuel instead of air abundance.

As far as feeding the cat extra waste fuel. I can show you this effect and the PCMs response on pre 2003 OBDII vs post 2003 CAN. On the older variant you can put an inline voltage offset on the upstream O2s causing the PCM to see a false rich signal which is a lean command. As the engine leans you can see the cat voltage drop. At around 350 mV for a few minutes the MIL lamp will light to gripe about it, but nothing else happens. On CAN models when you create the same condition the fuel trim goes way positive when the cat signal drops, and the reaction is immediate. So much so that we could actually accelerate and deccelerate in a '08 Nissan Sentra just by manipulating the downstream O2s. Why would the PCM bother to feed extra fuel to increase cat. temp. if that was not it's function? Think about it.

I have a dyno, and a 5, and 7 gas analyzer, and I can tell you exactly what happens in the real world in real time. Bottom line is that no matter how efficient the cat is it is still an efficient, obsolete, wholly unneeded dinosaur. Modern engine control has done away with it's usefulness entirely, and every vehicle that I have removed the cats on, and adjusted the PCM to compensate gets FAR better mileage, and lower emissions that it did with the fed. system in place. And yes you can go about tuning the PCM in a legal way you just have to know what you can, and cannot do. You can change the address the computer looks up, and you can modify certain sensor readings, but you cannot manipulate the PCMs programmed protocol.

Wow such ignorance here unless your drag racing or at the track the performance gains from taking of a cat and emission components is very very small as well as the fuel mileage increases. Ya the cat can cause a lil more fuel to be consumed only because it is a VERY slight restriction in the exhaust. And if your so worried about fuel consumption drive a EV or a hybrid. If you want performance then there is so much more things you need to do other than cut the cat off. But I guess that 1-3 HP is worth 70-80% more emissions??

The EGR system actually saves you gas but I can't tell you how many customers have taken them off because they think it would help. The PCV would have no effect on gas millage or performance.. in fact if you don't have some kind of ventilation you could pop your oil pan or worse blow your motor up! They used to just vent to the air, but now they burn the fumes in the engine.. whats so wrong with that? Ya the evap system that catches unburned fuel vapors that evaporate in your tank and stores them in a charcoal can so they could be burned later really hurts your mileage and performance too I bet? Oh wait it is actually saving you gas that you woulda lost while your car was off. Almost every sensor in your car, your MAF or MAP, O2s, CKP and CMP, the coolent temp sensor, throttle position, electronic throttles, injectors and spark controls are all used to lower emissions now. Even the beepin transmissions are all engineered to give the best fuel mileage and least emissions. There is so many more things I don't feel like listing..

All the commercials are advertising the lowest fuel mileage compared to their competitors and you really think there trying to increase them on purpose? The manufactures are limited to how many emissions they can create before they can put a car on the market. If they did not need a cat to meet these these conditions then there would not be a cat on them! Its not like they WANT to put it on there.

Sense the cats have been around smog has dropped, look at pictures of LA before cats were around. People were really getting sick and dying and they decided to do something about it. Ya LA still has a lot of smog but no where near as much as before cats and other emission devices were installed. So go ahead and take em off and other emission stuff it won't harm anyone.

If the internet was around when my grandfather was alive, he would have been on this site with his hatred of the Catalytic converter. That and piston size. He was convinced that a smaller diameter piston with a longer stroke was better that a larger diameter piston with short stroke.
He cut out the Cat's on all his vehicles that had them and "punched" a hole through it so there was not restriction. Instant horsepower increase and still passed emissions in all the vehicles he modified. My first car had a grandfather modified cat and I was worried when I moved to the big city and had to pass emissions test with my empty cat. No problems. Grandfather also talked about when he was a kid, he would install a spark plug right into the tail pipe and have it wired to a second coil. with a flip of a switch and opening of the throttle he would get blue flame to shoot out like modern day funny cars.

MY pos ford had a problem with cat (actually the whole truck was an issue) and fuel. I would be driving down the road and suddenly loose all power no matter the position of the accelerator. I had chased sensors and fuel pressure ghosts for a while but one night I got lucky and felt extra heat coming from the bottom of my truck. Sure enough, the whole cat was RED HOT and actually blistering the sound damping material on the frame. Fix my ford that week by removing the cat. Still passed emission that few times I had to go.


[edit on 5/16/2010 by staple]

reply to post by smoking man


First off take the blinders of academia off. UTI is paid to teach you to do it the way the industry wants it done, and that anything else is patently wrong, or obsurd. I know men who designed engines in the 60, and 70s that are still 20 years of ahead of today. We will never see them.

Secondly 14.7:1 is not stoichiometric at all load values. Sorry to burst your bubble. 14.7:1 is an emissions compromise that goes back to the days of carburetor thinking. Stoichiometry is the measuring of exactly how much fuel to add to exactly how much air for complete burn. That changes with load, temp RPM etc... That's one reason newer high end cars are going with wideband sensors that work above, and below lambda. The biggest obstacle to comlete burn is our fuel delivery system. A little mechanic class 101 now. Liquid fuel doesn't burn right? It's the vapor we want. Not only that, we'd like to have short chain hydrocarbons like pentane, heptane, propane etc... except the stuff we put in our tank is mostly octanes, nonecanes, dodecanes etc... the longer the HC chain the longer it takes to burn. The octane molecule is right at the threshold of being too long to burn in time to add power to the combustion cycle because it burns too slow. That's why it is the target molecule for rating gasoline. Anything longer goes out the tailpipe to get burned in the cat.

Now this will blow your mind, and I'm sure you won't believe me. I have an '01 Mitsubishi Montero with a tuned PCM, and other various...mods. At low load cruise it runs at 22:1 AFR. I get 20 mpg in town, and 28 on the highway. Factory EPA est. for the vehicle is 12-14 combine. I have put 70K miles on it, and pulled the heads just to prove there was no damage being done to an auto maintenance contractor interested in our tech. Not only was their no damage the heads were clean as a whistle, no carbon build up at all, valves were perfect. It looked like it had maybe 10K miles on it. How do I run at 22:1 AFR? I use thermal catalytic cracking and a little chemo cracking to make smaller HC chains before the are introduced into the combustion chamber. I get more burnable fuel (in time to produce power, and not cat. feed) per gram delivered. So the amount of combustable material in the cylinder at ignition is comparable to a higher AFR. What I am delivering is available to be immediately used at time of ignition not blown out the tailpipe. It also burns way faster, and requires fairly moderate retardation of timing. The faster burn delivers more energy to the piston before critical crank angle, and then the flame front burns out just as the exhaust valve opens. Ultra lean burn at low load WILL NOT harm your engine. My Exhaust gas temps run a little hotter by maybe 150 deg. at the flange. The cats are stone cold, and the emissions are essentially zero. It also runs like a striped ape. I love it when people try to tell me what I have done for the last 5 years doesn't work, and then they see it in use on a street vehicle, and it works perfectly.

Real world driving results are hard to argue with. People need to get their heads out of the numbers and books and remember the concept of evidence based practice. A LOT of times the books are wrong, outdated, or pushing a paradigm of thought that works with an agenda. The smartest auto tech I know has no formal education, and he makes ASE master techs look like school kids, but he started wrenching in 1967, and has stayed current with technology, and didn't drink the cool aid in the 70s and early 80s on all the emissions propaganda. Thought I'm sure dear monsignor that you will refuse to peer through my telescope. When reality challenges paradigm we must protect paradigm. To be 1 step ahead is genius, but that 2nd step makes people nervous. They just can't accept it yet.

I bought a car once here in the states a few years later the state i was in mandated smog/emissions inspections and when i went to get tested i passed with flying colors but when they did the visual they failed me because there was no CAT on the vehicle. I went and spent $350 to have a new cat put on and went back for retesting and i failed the test. The CAT actually made it worse.

So i went home unbolted the CAT and busted out the interior so it was hollow put it back on and went and got tested again and i passed.

reply to post by Sky watcher


2 stroke would be a viable solution. They are a bit more intrinsically efficient than the otto cycle. However they would be noisy, and wouldn't have that sexy exhaust note we all crave from our cars.

My solution would be a vapor enhanced diesel. More than enough power, super clean burn, great economy, and it still sounds sexy.

reply to post by die_another_day


quote] i thought catalytic converters simply turn nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide into inert gases.

You are correct.


The desired air fuel ratio is 14.7 parts of air (about 20% O2 and 78% N2) : to 1 Part of Fuel by weight.

The Oxidization of the fuel provides a heat source, that heats the air in the cylinder, thus the Nitrogen (78% of the air) expands, as it can not be burnt, and pushes the piston down.

If Nitrogen could burn, the Engine would Not run, as an implosion would occur, instead of expansion.

Most of the emission is Nitrogen.

It is NOx which is the greater threat.

• Hydrocarbons: this class is made up of unburned or partially burned fuel, and is a major contributor to urban smog, as well as being toxic. They can cause liver damage and even cancer. The regulations regarding hydrocarbons vary according to the engine regulated, as well as the jurisdiction. In some cases, "non-methane hydrocarbons" are regulated, while in other cases, "total hydrocarbons" are regulated. Technology for one application (to meet a non-methane hydrocarbon standard) may not be suitable for use in an application that has to meet a total hydrocarbon standard. Methane is not toxic, but is more difficult to break down in a catalytic converter, so in effect a "non-methane hydrocarbon" standard can be considered to be looser. Since methane is a greenhouse gas, interest is rising in how to eliminate emissions of it.
• Carbon monoxide (CO): a product of incomplete combustion, carbon monoxide reduces the blood's ability to carry oxygen; overexposure may be fatal.
• Nitrogen oxides (NOx): These are generated when nitrogen in the air reacts with oxygen at the high temperature and pressure inside the engine. NOx is a precursor to smog and acid rain. NOx is a mixture of NO and NO2. NO2 destroys resistance to respiratory infection. For dogs most of the nitrogen dioxide is removed in the nasal cavity. Jumbo vehicles and delivery trucks blow hot exhaust, containing life dangerous quantities of NO2 into the atmosphere.
• Particulates – soot or smoke made up of particles in the micrometre size range: Particulate matter causes respiratory health effects in humans and animals.
• Sulphur oxides (SOx): A general term for oxides of sulphur, which are emitted from motor vehicles burning fuel containing a high concentration of sulphur.

Also see..

en.wikipedia.org...

For the quantities of each of the emissions.

To the posters arguing over whether or not to just cut the cat off, and be done. If you do not adjust the tuning of the engine to operate without the cat, it isn't a good idea. I know some cars, sometimes do better just by chopping it off, but that usually isn't the case. On newer vehicles you will open a big can of worms if you just lob the cat off. The comustion characteristics have to be changed to run without a cat correctly, and not make worse pollution. This is what I am trying to get at. The control system on our modern cars is sophisticted enough to not need the cat, AT ALL. It is programmed however to work with a cat installed and doesn't work well without it. If the cat is removed you have to compensate to get the gains, and not pollute. The automotive industry could easily not put the converter on the car, and program the PCM to run clean without it from the factory. Other countries are already doing this, and have for years. We are way behind the times.

To the argument that the car companies have no interest in keeping the cat from a business perspective. Really? seriously. They make a profit from every component installed on that vehicle. They don't make cats for free, they don't put them on for free, and they don't just break even either. It is an added expense to the manufacturing process, and they have a margin of profit from it. The benefit of it using more fuel from their perspective? Hmm... If I had a couple million setting around, and I wanted to invest it in something I absolutely knew would make money. Let's see I make cars, cars use gas. The more gas my cars use the more money the oil company makes. If I invest in oil, and my car uses a lot of it, well darnation!!! I make money coming, and going. Sheesh guys come on. The whole "Car companies have no interest in making less efficient cars." doesn't hold water. Look at all the touted Ford research that has suddenly dried up, and dissappeared. You never hear about it anymore. Because it didn't work? Yeah right.

I know a guy who invented a relay for Ford that would basically last forever, not literally, but well beyond the service life of the vehicle. He was paid, thanked, signed a non-compete/non-disclosure, and the plans were filed away to never be seen again. You will never see his relay on a new Ford EVER. If cars never break, they can't sell new cars. It's called engineered obsolescence.

If all cars suddenly doubled their fuel economy tomorrow our economy would tank because oil futures would fall through the floor. Why do you think we don't have an all electric car? Becasue we don't have good enough batteries? We've had the ability to make good enough batteries for decades. It's because they would use no oil, and would destabilize the status quo too much.

reply to post by Binder


This is a very informative and well though out post. I had never stopped to consider the fuel that goes into warming up the cat.

My only question is, where do you come up with the 30% figure?

-rrr

reply to post by Binder


Binder, I would add another reason why removing the cat's restriction might cause trouble. The exhaust pipe is tuned, really tuned like a musical instrument so that the reflected pulse arrives at the precise time. Changes to this tuning are not the end of the world but can hurt an engine's mid to low end torque, and you can imagine how that could change driving habits enough to be more wasteful as a driver needs to reach higher revs to get the same power out of the car.

-rrr