Mechanics tip for passing smog
 

Hi Guys,

I have my CA smog check coming up next month. I have a M2 ECU, and a downpipe, so I was a little worried about passing the sniff test. My Cheap Bastard Intake isn't visible, so that isn't a concern.

I have a mechanic friend who won't smog the car (not that good of a friend). He said to bring the car by, and he would do a sniff test for free. He checked it out and found that it was polluting well above the legal limit with the idle at 750. At 2000 RPM, it was fine. He was a little surprised at the idle numbers, so he said to get in the car and step on the gas to make it idle just below 1000 rpms. It worked!! The emission levels dropped to almost zero. So now I have to reset my idle to around 950 before I try to do the "real" smog test.

Just thought I would share this, Adam

Im in texas and they just got about as worse as cali did on the smog test. Buy my guy when I buy the computer is going to just have me running on basically fumes so that there is virtually no fuel going into the car for the smog test. so you could try that as well.

If you throw in the stock ecu you should pass without a problem. Also you can drive the car hard right before taking it in.

Unfortunately, my ECU was upgraded by M2. I don't have a stock one.

M2 should not have changed the idle area as that is not really affected by mods as compared to boosted areas.

I assume the air pump is there and working.

All the smog stuff is there except the Pre Cat. I think the smog pump is working fine, since the emissions are excellent at 2k.

I don't think I have a problem, just wanted to pass along a tip for others who may have a similar experience.

In WA state, they read the rpm levels during the test, and require the rpms to be in a certain range during the idle and cruise tests. This would fail us here, as I think the maximum idle is 950, I think.

Or I'm speaking from my lower intestinal tract terminus, whereby you may disregard this fairly blatant attempt to increase my post count in a juvenile effort towards virtual acceptance.

and I STILL haven't done my airbox mod. I kick me daily...

I think the limit is 950 here too.
I was wondering about that airbox mod. I guess you must still be trying to get those two needle valves to work together. I know what that is like.......:banghead:

Nah... I find the length of the tubing to get allll the way up to the fender and alll the way back down again is giving me 9 lbs primary, 8 lbs secondary, and almost no transition. Plenty of power to sit in traffic and get rained on with!

Woo Hoo! Hijacking in progress

Put in that Cheap Bastard airbox mod, and you will get better than 9.

Hope they don't think we are terrorists.

I thought that in cali they ran the car at a number of different RPM ranges during the test, maybe I'm wrong.

Also, I've heard... that for a couple of hundred bucks you can always find a shop that will make your car pass smog.

My car failed the old smog test at idle so the tech just held the idle at around 950 rpm and it pass squeaky clean. But then again i knew the guy.

Adam, I've got a stock FD3S ECU I can let you borrow. I'll drop it off with you on my way down around the 25th. Just send it back to me after you're done with the test.

I'm surprised your car is putting out that much emission at idle. I had a 0-mile engine w/ RB dual-tip and downpipe register way below CA smog max (this was after my engine builder got the guy to overlook the missing pre-cat).

This is funny:

http://www.smogcentral.com/HTML/smog_dogs.htm