06 T&C 3.8L 140k miles .... Acceleration turned terrible and it sounds like the exhaust may be restricted. Other than obvious visual problems are there any codes to look for if this condition exists?

 

Different car, but a collapsed catalytic converter gave me running issues before, similar to what you've said in your other post.
You could prove it by disconnecting the exhaust, engine side of the cat, and take it a (noisy)run to see if it's any better.
Leaving the egr a bit loose, so there were gasses escaping, also allowed it to run a bit better/prove the cat issue.

 

as soon as the weather breaks I'm going to take a look down under.... ...is rhere any other possible restriction other than the plugged cat or a crushed exhaust pipe?

 

I suppose if any box or pipe had failed, disconnecting before the suspected blockage, and taking it for a run, would show it faulty.

 

Vacuum Gauge is a good easy way to test.

 

Once I dropped the pipe it was clear the cat was plugged! Had to replace the oxy sensor too and it's running fine. Why wasn't their a code that could clearly lead to cat converter? I knew instinctively there was something causing the back pressure and miserable performance. The only code that remained before I dropped the pipe was the oxy sensor and the egr.(which I had previously replaced. Could a bad oxy sensor in the first place have caused the cat to fail?

 

I only wish I could've watched this video before I started digging into codes. Why ISN'T there a code for restricted exhaust pipe?

 

I think it comes down to cost of implementation and the likelihood that it will probibly only happen to vehicles which have passed what is considered to be their life expectancy.

Even if it cost them something like $1 to implement, when you're building several million vehicles that soon adds up to a lot of lost profit.

 

take out an o2 sensor one before one after the converters that will tell you.

 

You mean ... take an O2 measurement downstream of the cat converter? Yes .. that would've done it I believe. I was just wondering if one of the current code(s) would identify it as faulty.