Toyota Avensis Mk2 VVTi - EML advice

Leonard Hofstadter

So the engine malfunction light came on in my Mum's 1.8 VVTi Avensis yesterday.

Unfortunately, according to the garage it went to today, the fault code is something to do with the catalytic converter .

My Mum is under the impression that it would cost quite a bit of money to repair (which I'm sure is true) and it may not be such a good investment long term.

I know some of you know a lot about Toyotas so your advice would be much appreciated.

I'm not one for skimping on maintenance but it is a 13 1/2 year old car with 201,000 miles on the clock, although since it's a Toyota there's surely another 50,000 miles in it. As it happens, I drove it yesterday (before the warning light came on) and while the suspension does feel a bit tired (as one might expect with that kind of mileage on it), there's really nothing 'wrong' with it apart from the tracking. I certainly had no complaints about the engine or the way it performed.

Are used cats a viable option?

Are spurious ones a good idea? They seem to be about €400 on Mick's garage.

How much is a genuine one from Toyota? I know that's really the best option but I suspect it's silly money for a genuine Toyota part.

I'm normally a sceptic about these kind of things, but would any of those catalytic converter cleaner type products make a difference?

We've had it since new and it's never given any bother bar needing a gearbox eight years ago and like all VVTis, it likes oil, although it's not too bad now that it's on 10W40 and has always sailed through the emissions aspect of an NCT.

I see no reason to scrap what is an otherwise perfectly good and functioning car, but maybe that is the only option?

What would ye suggest? Thanks in advance.

biko

There are universal catalytic converters, I had one fitted to an old yoke and it passed nct one or two more times before I sold the car on

fancy pigeon

Wang in some cataclean, clear the fault and see if that helps the situation...

I can vouch for cataclean, I can't vouch if the car is burning more oil than it used to, leading to the EML

Toyotafanboi

See if it was code P0420, it's a popular code with older high mileage Toyota's and relates to the cat. It will bring on the check engine light and makes no difference to driveability and on its own won't prevent you passing an emissions test either.

Have a read of this thread.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057822071

Leonard Hofstadter

Thanks a million to both of ye.

I'll do my best to find out what the code was.

If it is that code then mapping out the post cat sensor would be a great idea!

I'm not normally a believer in bodge jobs but I know the car is fine otherwise and spending the best part of €800 on a new cat or just scrapping it when the car could keep going as is for another couple of years is a waste of money.

I'll definitely put cataclean into it, I have a OBD2 bluetooth scanner so next time I'm at the car I'll reset the codes and put that in, and see where we go from there.

I don't really mind the MIL being on all the time (if that's what the fault code is and it won't affect how the engine runs) but I would like to have working traction and stability control.

Toyotafanboi

I ran my Celica for over a year with the check engine light on with that fault code, it never really bothered me when I knew what it was and like yourself, i'd be fairly particular usually with wanting to keep the car 100% but economically a bit like your Avensis, it made no sense to fix it.

The only downside I could think of at the time was that if a second fault came up with something else, I wouldn't know about it because the check engine light is already on.

ofcork

If it's the P0420 I had it on my 04 avensis for about 3 years and passed nct no problem main dealer wanted 800 for a cat!!

Leonard Hofstadter

ofcork wrote: »

If it's the P0420 I had it on my 04 avensis for about 3 years and passed nct no problem main dealer wanted 800 for a cat!!

Talking to them this evening and €800 is the price they were told as well.

From what I can establish, I don't think the garage did too much investigation at all, I think they just saw a fault code that said it was the cat and decided the only solution was a new cat (which they have declined because of the price).

My parents don't even know what the fault code is (although I am down in Cork next weekend so I will find out myself).

They seemed to think that the car is really past it, apparently they are topping it up with oil every 1-2 weeks (although how much oil it is using between these top ups is anyone's guess - but for reference it is barely doing 6,000 miles a year these days), which admittedly was news to me, I knew it liked some oil but I didn't think it was using that much. Their mechanic told them that the engine is tired and over time it will start to lose power and won't be very driveable, which makes sense to me alrighht.

When I drove it yesterday I didn't see any signs of excess oil consumption (no smoke or anything like that) although it was a rather warm day, so very hard to properly judge.

I think their 'plan' is to hope for the best at the NCT later on in the year and take it from there.

I'm definitely going to try the cataclean product and hope that it will put the engine light off for a while anyway. I guess the sooner it comes back on after I reset it, the more I know how badly worn the engine and/or cat are, and then it will be at a stage of not being worth repairing.

ofcork

Mine happened to be in kearys as they had a service offer at the time obviously plugged it in read the code and said cat straight away,someone here a few years ago changed a cat for the same reason and the light came back.Mine had 167k miles and was starting to burn a bit of oil too.