Catalytic Converter Cleaner

[Rowdy Dalton]

Has anyone used a diesel catalyst converter cleaner? I know Dura Lube sells some specific for diesels.
I don't have any.issues, other than decreased mpg over the years, and my truck has a little over 186,000 miles on it. Also, I rarely load it down with anything heavy, so the engine is never run hard. I figure a good cleaning might pep it up a little. Or, I could just open up the downside of the.exhaust, at the catalytic converter, and gut it out. Problem solved.

 

[Topzide]

Not so much as load heavy as get out and let it run! Get up to temp and run some grades and miles at highway speeds. This is what I do with my '14. Always up to temp and longer way home so that it's at temp and speeds for a period of time. DW always asks why we go that way home when other way is shorter. My truck, my rules! She likes the ride and the fact she doesn't have to drive to the stores!

 

[Rowdy Dalton]

Not so much as load heavy as get out and let it run! Get up to temp and run some grades and miles at highway speeds. This is what I do with my '14. Always up to temp and longer way home so that it's at temp and speeds for a period of time. DW always asks why we go that way home when other way is shorter. My truck, my rules! She likes the ride and the fact she doesn't have to drive to the stores!

Unfortunately, I live less than 2 miles from my job, and maybe 4 miles from where I work out. At least for the past 6 years. For 4 of those years the truck has essentially been Parked. I take it out at least once a week, and get the engine up to full temp, and let it have a couple of hard accelerations, winding the rpms up. A little black smoke puffs out during the acceleration. It pulls strong, idles smooth, and no more engine and injectors clattering since the additives were put in, a couple of weeks ago. I would just like to make sure the catalytic converter isn't becoming plugged up.

 

[Ozymandias]

This is an open design, nothing accumulate in that converter.
I never heard of one plugged or restricted.

 

[Rowdy Dalton]

This is an open design, nothing accumulate in that converter.
I never heard of one plugged or restricted.

Isn't it still a pretty compact Honeycomb design?? If so, then how would it not clog up, after years of soot passing through?

 

[Ozymandias]

Like you say, it passes through. The design is entirely different then a particulate filter. Here the channels go straight through, soot is blown through and out the tail pipe.

 

[User113]

It seems to me that clogging would depend on the size of the channels. I had one of the cats plug up on my Jaguar XJ6 (that car had two cats in series), and being gas powered, I can't imagine it making as much soot as a diesel. The catalytic elements in that car resembled household window screens. (That's also why I shopped for an early 2004 truck...)

 

[AH64ID]

The best cleaner is heat, drive it more.

There are test pipes that replace the cat if you want to remove it for testing purposes

 

[Rowdy Dalton]

The best cleaner is heat, drive it more.

There are test pipes that replace the cat if you want to remove it for testing purposes

Being that mine is an 06, will a "Test Pipe" affect the Oxygen Sensor, if it even has one? I know if you do that with newer diesels, the have fits, and start throwing codes.

 

[AH64ID]

Being that mine is an 06, will a "Test Pipe" affect the Oxygen Sensor, if it even has one? I know if you do that with newer diesels, the have fits, and start throwing codes.

No sensors in your exhaust to care what is or is not installed.

 

[Rowdy Dalton]

No sensors in your exhaust to care what is or is not installed.

Excellent.

.

 

[Ozymandias]

Post #1 "I don't have any issues" - so leave it alone, decreasing milage can be anything else as well, the cat would be my last thing to think about as I said before it's a very open design they do not clog.

 

[BigPapa]

Cats are normally “self cleaning” and don’t stop up unless there’s a problem. For instance, we had to replace the cats in my son’s Mustang GT a few weeks ago. The LH cat had come apart and pieces had blown into the mid-pipe and stopped it up. Very unusual. This is what we found in the mid-pipe.

I suggested we pull the plugs and see what they looked like. We’d just replaced them in July. All looked good except #8, LH rear cylinder. This was from a bad injector dumping gas. This is what took out the cat.