Quote:
Originally Posted by Dake
I'll be honest, I can't speak to the effects on the engine though they make a certain amount of laymen-logic sense.
What I can speak to from personal experience is your exhaust system may rust quicker. Have you ever noticed sitting at a stop light in the morning, the car in front of you has water pour out of the exhaust when they move forward? That's condensation which builds up and if you don't get everything good and hot to burn that out, it pools inside and will eventually cause components to corrode.
The personal experience comes from having to replace the exhaust multiple times on a shop truck (a Ford Ranger) that drove maybe 5k a year. It didn't appear to bother the mechanicals though.
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This is partially true, condensation sure but most of it is the side effect of Catalyst Efficiency.
The engine produces from combustion
O2
CO2
CO
HC(hydrocarbon aka gas)
NOx
The catalyst converts all these gasses in H2O by combining O2
with the other gasses IE O2 with HC dropping the C and adding the H equals H2O.
The catalyst is made up of platinum and puladium ( sorry I know its miss spelled)
Once heated up to 1200 degrees it begins its work.
If you want to know how effective your Cat is use a 5 gas analyzer
Note H2O , Co2 and O2 are the only gasses the EPA will allow into the atmosphere.