Got a civic areodeck t reg 1.8 vti.
its failed its mot on a few things but my main concern is the cat! it failed badly on the emissions test! the tester tried it twice but couldnt get the readings to come down and reckons i should take the cat off and look through it to see if the membrane is worn or missing etc, he said it could be a problem with the lambda senor too?
i need some advice on this please, i want to know: If i take off the cat and inspect it, will i be able to put it back on without getting any new gaskets and pasting it etc? and can you give me any advice in general? im ok at fixing problems on the car if i know what im doing but i only have a basic knowledge.

any comments would be appreciated

i live in the u.k by the way.
may thanks
Denis

 

Did you just acquire this car or has it passed before and you're sure no one has done anything sinister to it since then?

In the first case you want to check for the cat being hollowed out and/or the check light disabled. The light is easy, turn the key on but don't start and it should light up. Usually if the sensor is bad the check engine light will be on while you're driving.

If the cat is under the car and has a flange with two bolts and springs on the bolts it's pretty easy to take apart and put back together at that flange. But you should have new bolts and nuts ready because they often break when trying to unscrew them. Take one flange off and you should see a fine ceramic honeycomb structure inside. This doesn't necessarily mean the unit still has catalytic activity but at least it hasn't melted down or been hollowed out.

 

I bought the car just before xmas with little service history (not good i know) it had a faulty distributor and wouldnt run at all when I phoned him, but he said he would obviously do a good deal on it (private seller) so we went and looked over it and found nothing wrong apart from the obvious and payed him £700 for it, original asking price was £1200 (when it was running). got a distributor for it and has since run fine, the only thing ive noticed which i put down to tuning probs, was that it wont go over around 95 mph and doesnt seem to hit the rev limitor properly e.g when you normally hit it the power drops and rises rapidly (not a good description...sorry) anyway, it doesnt do that, but at the same time it wouldnt scream and blow up either, basically it wont over rev or whatever. i did have the car over to honda dealership before to see why the engine management light was on but it was only because of the faulty distributor at that time. since then the light hasnt come back on (apart from when you do like you said and turn the key without starting, but then it goes off as normal when the engine runs.

Could the lack of power at the 95mph mark be due to either the cat or lambda being faulty do you think?

thanks
denis