A friend of mine has a '98 4 door Accord EX (4-banger). It has
115K miles, but runs great (of course, it's a Honda ).

However, lately he's been getting a check engine light. When I talked
to him last night, I thought he said something about "cat" and he mentioned
getting a new exhaust. But in an email today, he said the CEL was:
"low catalyst in the fuel for the first bank" or whatever that means.

I didn't see that in a list of Honda codes, but now I just wonder if
his gas cap isn't on tight - lol. He did, however, mention that his
gas mileage has been on a rapid decline the past month or so.
Any clues?

Thanks in advance...

 

What's the number of the code?

 

I'm not sure - he just said "Well, I just remember what it said...I didn't see a code"
when he took it in. Maybe I'll have to go to pepboys w/ him, to see what it is...

When I find out, I'll bump the thread...

 

I have a similiar code on my 98 accord.

Code 420, bad catalyst something or other. The local dealer states that my catalytic converter is bad. Last week though, the car went to a shop for AC recharge, and a FI system clean, and the CEL was reset, and hasnt been back on since. I've been told the FI system being clean could have cleared out a "blockage" or such.

*shrug*

 

what happens is these OBDII cars have two O2's.. one before the cat (this is the O2 that actually tunes the engine while it runs) and one after the cat that measures the exhaust gasses to see if the cat is functioning correctly. Atfer time the cat loses effecentcy OR that 02 can go bad.

anyway... assuming he still has the stock exhaust on the car (at least the cat that is) i'd guess that o2 sensor took a dive.

has he tried resetting the ECU? that took care of this MIL on my friend 97 V6 a couple months ago and it hasnt come back since.

 

OK, my buddy said he thought he was pretty sure the code was "420".
I guess he should just have it checked out at a Honda dealership?

Are there any 02 sensor workarounds (i.e. resistors) for this Accord?
So he could just replace the cat with some straight pipe and see how
that goes?

 

he means 42. 42 is secondary 02 bank (the o2 i was talking about). If he replaces/removes the cat he'll DEFINATLY get a code 42

I'd just buy one of those MIL eliminators (do a search) that OBDII cars buy when they remove the car.

 

Gimpy,

Cool, thanks for the help. Off to illegal exhaust land we go...MU HAHAHAHA.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by andyep3 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">OK, my buddy said he thought he was pretty sure the code was "420".
</TD></TR></TABLE>
Do you mean p0420?

 

It's possible...I wasn't there when the code was read. But I think Gimpy was
on in his assessment. The car has high miles, so the cat is probably toast
(especially as hard as this guy runs his car). I'll be asking questions again if
that doesn't fix it, I'm sure...