Bought a 2000 Lexus ES300 two months ago for $275...clean interior, minor battle scars on the exterior, no rust, overall, quite serviceable and not embarrassing to be seen in for being completely torn up and looking like a clown. Anyway, 3 coils were dead when I picked it up, got that fixed up and it really made it run well. Had a knock sensor code which I took care of to get it out of that limp home mode that also prevented it from shifting into 4th gear. Once that code was cleared, I got a p0420 pending code that eventually triggered the dash light.
As of now, tomorrow I'm going to check for exhaust leaks before the cat. Seems some have talked about fuel pressure possibly causing issues so I'm going to check that too for good measure. On my scanner, I noticed that the long term fuel trim for bank 2 was sitting at around 10.0 while it was around 1.8 for bank 1...unsure if that can be related to this specific code as I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to diagnosing issues using live data from a scanner although I've been reading as much as I could. I've seen lots of folks talk about the O2 sensor behind the cat being a potential culprit; I understand that O2 sensors should fluctuate back and forth between from around 0.1v and 0.9...I have yet to check that and will report back what I find. Also, seems like the A/F sensors right off the exhaust manifolds don't usually trip this code so I'm not too worried about them.
Am I going in the right direction in my troubleshooting before throwing in the towel and potentially replacing the cat? Am I missing anything else?
As of now, tomorrow I'm going to check for exhaust leaks before the cat. Seems some have talked about fuel pressure possibly causing issues so I'm going to check that too for good measure. On my scanner, I noticed that the long term fuel trim for bank 2 was sitting at around 10.0 while it was around 1.8 for bank 1...unsure if that can be related to this specific code as I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to diagnosing issues using live data from a scanner although I've been reading as much as I could. I've seen lots of folks talk about the O2 sensor behind the cat being a potential culprit; I understand that O2 sensors should fluctuate back and forth between from around 0.1v and 0.9...I have yet to check that and will report back what I find. Also, seems like the A/F sensors right off the exhaust manifolds don't usually trip this code so I'm not too worried about them.
Am I going in the right direction in my troubleshooting before throwing in the towel and potentially replacing the cat? Am I missing anything else?