Drive Clean failed – suggestions?
 

Took my car in for drive clean and it failed pretty badly. The shop was unwilling to give a conditional pass. Any shop suggestions?

Do you have all the stock main cat, air pump and stock ECU in place?

What were the readings?

I believe the main cat is in place with the air pump, but engine is running a PFC tune with a downpipe and street port.

Readings (limit following in italics):

2500 RPM
HC (ppm): 1629 – 200
CO (%): 7.51 – 1
RPM: 2476
Dilution %: 16.36 – 6

Idle
HC (ppm): 2503 – 200
CO (%): 5.85 – 1
RPM: 971
Dilution %: 15.36 – 6

Make sure you have airpump hooked up (directly to cat if possible) add some methyl (250ml) in about a 1/4 tank of gas and it will pass. Make sure to go fill up right away after

Methyl alcohol? I might give it a try. Thanks for the tip!

This is what I heard from one of the shops:

Conditional passes were supposed to be phased out 2 years after the start of the Drive Clean program (begun in 1999). Cars used to perform better, emissions-wise on the old test cycle, which used a dyno (phased out 4 years ago) instead of the current 2-speed idle test. The current regime's testing equipment has a live link to government monitoring systems.

The Wikipedia article seems fairly balanced in its summary on the system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario%27s_Drive_Clean

So I got a conditional pass.

I found out the car has two aftermarket cats, with a hard line to the air pump in front of the second cat. The mechanic said the O2 sensor was stuck at 1 volt, so they disconnected the brake booster to check if the sensor was working properly (it was – the voltage dropped). They also did a smoke test to check for vacuum leaks, but they didn't find any.

In conclusion, the mechanic suspects that the tuned computer (PFC) is dumping fuel into the system by design. That's what he wrote in the Drive Clean report... the list of emission repair parts (new stock ECU – back ordered in Japan) and labor exceed the $450 repair limit by a wide margin.

The car runs cleaner above idle, when the cats are hot. As there are no drivability problems, I've decided to leave the car in its current state for now – any modifications would undo the work of the tuner and diminish performance improvements from the hardware upgrades.

I also found out that the RX-8 wheels on my car need spacers – the offsets are wrong for the FD, which is why they're inset on my car and rubbing the fender liners.

I'd like to endorse the work of Bob Elford at Advanced Automotive Car Care (http://acadvancedauto.mechanicnet.com/). He took a lot of time and effort to thoroughly inspect and test the car when many other garages refused to look at it. Please consider his garage if you're looking for quality service and Drive Clean testing in North York (it's at the corner of Leslie and York Mills) – Bob is a Drive Clean instructor.