Eight. Lorain, Cuyahoga, Medina, Lake, Geauga, Portage, and Summit.

I own a 1984 Mazda and a 1986 VW. This is not an accident.

Both cars are going to be nicely modified by the end of the year... well the Mazda is, but the VW will be too. The VW will be retaining the use of emissions equipment and the Mazda will have proper smog equipment retrofitted. There's no reason not to.

 

Who told you that? Most of the emissions is caused by most of the cars. Even back then, emissions laws were stringent enough that a poorly running modern car will pollute a lot more.

The majority of emissions is caused by poorly maintained cars ten years old and newer, because the majority of cars on the road is ten years old and newer. (Especially here, where even today Japanese junk will start to rust out before the payments are done)

I wonder how MUCH of that is because of absurd maintenance intervals. Some people actually believe it when they are told that you can go 100k on a set of spark plugs. I don't care what they're made of, two thirds of the way there the car will be running like crap.

 

wow thats some rust

 

Where? His car's freakin' clean.

 

In PA I have my '84 registered as an antique which means no smog and no annual inspection.

 

i kind of agree with that.

kind of an odd example, but dad had an audi a6 (2002ish? 03?) and one day he started it and it runs like crap and the CEL comes on.

so it needed plug wires, @50k or whatever that isn't unusual, but he was pissed cause, it broke. if the wires were on the normal schedule, he would have been happy to change em. oh and the dealership left all the old ones under the hood, FTL

its replacement, a 2007 A6 had the cel turn on @20k, and to fix it they had to pull the heads off and decarbon them, which is normal maintenance on my 1958 Tr3, but its rather unexpected on a 21st century automobile that isn't descended from a tractor....

and um its WAY easier to pull the head off the triumph, oh and the MPG went from 32highway to like 22 after the dealership "fixed" the A6, FTL

 

I don't know what it is about Audi people. We do decarbonizations all the time on various engines, including Audis, where you run the engine while dripping a admittedly nasty chemical into the intake stream IV style. I mentioned this on an Audi forum and basically got swamped with "OMG U CANT DO THAT IT WILL RUIN TEH INJECTOR O RINGS AND OTHER SEALS"

Uh, no. You don't have to disassemble the engine to decarbonize. (Unless it's a TDI in which case rodding out the intake manifold and inlet ports is a hyperbole-free 30k service)

Even before the direct injection engines, Audi had a TSB regarding symptoms that sounded exactly like carbon lock/carbon compression loss in rotaries. Funny thing is, the detailed fix was a chemical decarbonizing, NOT engine disassembly.

BTW - Audis are easy to work on once you're used to them. I can take an F.U. model V6 (the all aluminum one that breaks all the time) and have the heads off in about three hours, on in about six... The trick is just getting access to the back of the engine, because even the longitudinal engines are FWD in layout, the damn coolant manifold gets in the way of everything so it needs to be removed as early as possible.

 

it was a TDI..