I recently replaced my engine with a good low mileage engine and the car has all the emissions stuff so i thought my car would pass smog. I was wrong, i had 2000 HC which was the limit of the machine and 8% CO at idle. HC limit is 100 or 150 and CO is like 1 or 1.5%. I decided to change the o2 sensor because it was easy, but it didnt do anything. I noticed that the 02(oxygen and not the sensor) reading would fluctuate between 0 and 1%. So i put the car on the rack and found out that no air was going into the cat. I checked the air pump but the air pump works. I ran a hose from the air pump to the car and my car passed the high speed but still failed the low speed with 250 hc and 2% co. This was saturday, my day off, i was mad and clueless, so to make a long story short, it was the air control valve, one of the diaphrams were broken, the one by the firewall. On the diaphram there is a shaft with a spring and at the end is a seal, the seal broke off the rod. So basically the car had no port injection, the most of the air from the air pump would route its way back out to the intake and i basically had a vaccum leak. I fixed the acv by using the same part that i had from a japanese acv put it back and the car pass CA smog easily. Idle it had 32 hc and 0.1 co and high speed it had 2 hc and 0.0 co. This was still the old tail pipe test and not the enhance dyno test. the car was not driven hard before the test it was at the smog shop and they just started the car and held the revs till the car warmed up, so they didnt do anything special. So if your car faills emissions test gross polluter status try looking at the acv after you look at all the basics.

 

Good post! Defintely keep that in mind.

 

..hrm.. something to keep in mind in 2 years.

 

I'm really worried about my car passing. I sure as hell wont pass the visual. And I no longer have all the stock parts. I'm gonna have to go find a nice and corruptable tech

 

I know a really friendly tech but he is also really costly.

 

I should be in the same boat this november. I might end up running xylene or toulene, possibly an alcohol of some sort. Its kinda handy having a chemical factory and a few chemists around. Josh

 

search the St. Louis Post Dispatch website ( I believe it's www.postnet.net) They just did a big article about people trying to pass smog inspections wih alcohol and store-bought substances, and how they don't work. More times than not, they harm the fuel system, badly. Before you spend $2 and create hundreds in problems, search for that article. It came out yesterday the 26th or the 25th (don't recall).

-BN

 

Good **** Will. Glad you got it to pass. I will doing the same crap this winter.

-Jeff

 

Benjamin: They didn't get any empirical evidence, I did nothing but put 2 gallons of denatured alcohol in and it drastically lowered my emissions. I have a streetport, at the time other than that it was all stock and functioning fine, it's just that the streetport changed the levels of emissions, not much I could do about it.

 

Benjamin, Thanks for the concern, but whatever is done, it will be under the supervision of experienced chemists and car guys, so I won't just be pouring in a couple gallons of alcohol or something else errantly into my fuel tank and not being sure about what effects they could have on the 02

Jedon, thanks for the reassurance that this will work

 

I was about to use the denatured alochol but i just kept at it and found the source of the problem. I didnt have to pay for the repeated pretest and i did all the labor. If after i fixed the acv and it stil didnt pass i think i would have given the alochol a try. I seems to have worked for some fds.

 

When the time comes, I will definently check out the acv as well as the other smog equipment. Thanks for the advice.