Photo Essay - How To Replace Prius Spark Plugs

Oops, never mind: it turns out that I had the wire in the wrong part of the OBD plug!
Codes clear, tomorrow I'll do the smog check.

 

After you have cleared the DTC, you have to drive the car ~100 miles under a variety of conditions (both freeway and city driving) before the engine ECU will report it is ready for emissions testing.

 

Sooo... The p020 came back on after driving for a while. I had a long, friendly, candid conversation with (name witheld) at the test station. His opinion was that the cat was likely clogged beyond repair, but I could certainly try another acid soak. He pointed out another set of interesting facts.

• All Prius came with a 50 state legal cat.
• In California it is not legal to sell cat converters from a used Prius
• In other states, it is legal to sell cat converters from a used Prius
• While it is not legal to buy a cat out of state and ship it to california, it is less clear that there is a problem driving to another state, replacing the cat with another OEM cat and then returning. (I'm not interested in the hassle, but someone might find that interesting)
• Oil burning degrades cat converter performance. If you can avoid burning oil, you catalytic converter is likely to last longer.

Given the expense of cat converters here in CA, I'm thinking that installing a remanufactured engine might be a really good idea after all. (eg. eBay #171926451018 or something like that)

 

Did he already know of acid soaking, or of any successes?

Thought you could legally order them, but the supplier couldn't legally ship them into CA (and NY?).

Would be interesting to find out the CA legal status on out of state cat repairs, though it doesn't appear any smog techs are checking for terrorist cats at this time.

 

Thank you for sharing! It was helpful and managed to save $100.

I also used an instructional video on YouTube to pair with your post.

 

Looked on the russel site, no info on using on modern cars, no listing for the prius, is this because they are not compatible with Anti-lock brakes?