96 Camry Cat Converter Question P0420

[Avantgarde]

Hi,

I have my 96 Camry(2.2) with 177K miles on it.

At 173K(1 month ago), I decided to get my whole exhaust fixed(there were three big holes. One on the flex pipe, one on the cat converter and one another on the muffler(Here in Ohio there is a lot of rust). I had my repair guy replace the flex pipe and muffler with aftermarket ones, and remove the cat converter and replace a direct pipe to there. After this replacement I drove the car for more than 25 days and 3k miles, and didnt get any check engine light.

A few days ago check engine light came with the error code P0420. I have read the other topics on the forum. Here my question is,

I'm very happy with the performance of my car w/o cat converter and I don't care the smell. Is there a way of hacking of this light only for this error(because I want the light to come if there is any other problem)?

http://www.oqcgp.com/upgrades/o2spoof/o2spoof.php

I think the method given on the link decreases the voltage of second O2 sensor, so that ECU thinks that O2 amount after cat is ok. Is that applicable at 96 Camry?


If the only way of getting rid of this code is installing a new cat conveter, what's your suggestion going to be? What is the best practice brand? I don't want to spent a lot of money on a new one, either get fooled by a broken one at junk yards..


Thanks for your replies.


PS: Another option seems to remove the fuse for ECU for a couple seconds, however this is something temporary..

[lordstarwind]

best way would be to get an O2 eliminator or spacer and put the O2 sensor in the exhaust pipe where it belongs , the spacer moves it out of the exhaust stream and still lets it send the signals its suppost to while an eliminator would fool the computer into believing the signals from the eliminator are the signals from the O2 sensor and tells it that the air/fuel ratio is correct...

spacer is cheaper

eliminator is good, but it might be hard to find one that works with toyota ECU's

-LSW

[Avantgarde]

Thanks a lot for the reply. I'll search for a spacer too.

However I'm wondering if I can make the modification at a 96 camry the way on the link given at my first post..

[Rolla86]

Originally Posted by Avantgarde

Thanks a lot for the reply. I'll search for a spacer too.

However I'm wondering if I can make the modification at a 96 camry the way on the link given at my first post..

Nop, it will not work because your O2 sensor has only 2 wires, not four.

[Avantgarde]

Well, before I got action and did something to turn off the light, it went off itself yesterday. No check engine light anymore. I didn't do anything. Didn't touch fuse or ECU.

The thing is that I still don't have a cat converter. Is this normal?