Call me maniac, but I cut my cat to see what is inside....






That's why she died last week.....

 

good followup post pablo
and very good pics.

lots of gas and diesel stealing going on here now.
large tanks in back of pickups and large van box trucks doing station fillup and driveoff.
gas tank drillings and drainings right in driveways and parking lots
gas siphoning on construction sites and OTR trucks
next thing will be low quality gas sold by bootleggers and thieves

 

I use to drive to Russia in Ranger, sifon a half of gas to aero, becouse 1L of oct. 93 is $1.00 now

 

Hey Pablo,

Good thing you replaced the catalytic converter.

I had a car that started running rough, then suddenly while traveling down the Interstate, it began stuttering & died. I pulled the car over the the side of the road and I noticed that a full-sized Ford van followed me as I pulled over; it was a dry cleaners delivery van.

The lady driver said, "you'r Kars' On Far" (best Southern I can type), and I said, right lady thanks (thinking she'd been tipping the white lightning). But as I was thinking about what she said, I sensed the urge to look under the car. It was on fire. Fire was billowing from the catalytic converter in about a foot diameter surrounding it. Note: fire is hot. And, if you don't have a fire extinguisher (as I did not), this is how cars usually burn up on the side of the road (as I was later told by tow vehicle operators).

Next, the lady said "do you want to use my Far extinguisher?" (her accent wasn't as noticeable now). I used her company fire extinguisher and put out the fire. Nice lady. Moral of the story: (1) change your catalytic converter on schedule to keep it from backing-up, generating too much heat (glowing cherry red), then catching the oil and rubber on fire under your car (followed by the remainder of the vehicle), and (2) appreciate friendly good samaritans.

 

My cat was 20 years old when died.... No fire. van did not start onec! And ran VERY SLOOOOOWLY

 

If the cat is overheating like that, it is because the vehicle is already dumping raw fuel in there. The normal peak operating temperature of a cat is about 600 degrees, anything hotter than that requires lots of fuel.

The catalytic converter normally does not ever need to be replaced.

 

Look! to much ferrozen, to high oct. ratio. Gas burns too slowly and there is no tome to burn fully inside cylinders and goes on burning in cat overheating it.

Gas dealers periodically put to much ferrozen ore MTBE to gas and get oct. ratio higher then we need. Ferrozen kills spark plugs and cats....

Just an example... Military Ural trucks were deseigned for oct 93 gas, GAZ66, ZIL truck were designed for oct 80 gas. Use of oct 93 instead caused burned ex. valves and burned flex pipe....

 

my cat was 20 years old.... may be it is time to die?

 

if your ferrozen compound is what i think it is, some form of ferrous oxide or ferric acid magic octane potion, it's hell on engines. leaves a red or orange deposit on plugs and combustion chambers.

i never did find out what Arco and some of the other cheap gas retailers were dumping into their gas in the early 90's when tetra ethyl lead was outlawed as an octane and valve face lubricant additive.
whatever it was really fouled up the plugs on the small block and big block Chevvys I was running at the time. some at 13:1 static compression ratio and with 105 octane leaded gas, had to run the high test 101 octane which would foul the plugs in 500 miles.
white hard crusty deposits that clung to tips and bridged across to ground electrode. attached to the ceramic insulator tip like cement. they quit using it in the late 90s after so many complaints.

worst gas i ever saw was during the mid late 80s to early 90s in the switchover to non leaded gas. strange colors from orange to blue, strange smell like old paint thinner to kerosene, west coast was only getting that thick molasses high sulfur black crude from Alaska then. tons of benzene in our Alaska crude gas. causes lots of vapor lock problems in a carb engine. stuff will boil away on a hot day in a lawn mower.

 

Early 90's from Arco had to be MTBE. They hyped it a lot in commercials as a cleaner burning gas, when what it really was was an additional oxygenator. It was a byproduct of petroleum refining that had to be disposed of, but they found a way use it in gasoline and sell it for more than before, when they were actually selling you less gas.

It was great for them; the EPA wanted to reduce cold-start emissions by introducing oxygenated fuels, the oil industry needed to dispose of this byproduct, so they diluted the gas with it, and charged more for less product. Many drivers reported that their fuel systems were damaged by the MTBE. Fortunately, MTBE has been banned because of its carcinogenic qualities, which is why most of the industry switched over to alcohol as an octane booster and oxygenator.