Does backfiring cause damage to a car?

Answer 1

YES! Backfiring is caused by raw unburnt rich mixture gasoline passing from one or more of the engine's cylinders into the tailpipe assembly and igniting there, destroying parts

of the exhaust, like the expensive catalytic converter.

Usually, the ignition system is not working right. Or the ignition switch is manually switched off and on again while the engine is still running. A leaky fuel injector can also cause backfire.

If the backfire is from the air intake (air cleaner), then that tells us that a very lean air/fuel ratio condition exists. The mixture explodes in the intake manifold instead of in the combustion chamber. Sometimes an intake valve is burnt allowing the combustion to

spread into the intake manifold once per revolution.

Newer fuel injected engines almost never have this problem though. As the fuel is injected only at the time that the intake valve is open to suck in the atomized fuel with the throttled air to burn for power.