Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting '96 GL ATX throws P0430 after strong gust of wind?

The wife was driving her '96 GL around the other day in extremely strong, chilly winds.

She claims the MIL lamp came on immediately after a driving into a long burst of said winds. Her description was that she could feel the wind slow the car down from 45+ MPH.

Anyway, the code I get is "P0430 Catalyst System Efficiency below Limit - Bank No 2.".

I reset the MIL. If the cat is indeed shot, it will come back on sometime this week (daily driver). If not, could it be that the O2 sensors are overly sensitive to temperature differential? (Bank 2 faces the front of the car, right?) It seems unlikely to me that this would be so, but then again, curing the MIL on my SVT by topping off the battery seemed unlikely as well.

Bank 2 is the one facing the front of the car, so it is possible that the wind cooled off the cat enough to make the computer think it was dead. If the code comes back, then it very well could be that the cat is going dead. If it never comes back, it was just a fluke that occurred from the wind.