Hey, when are we going to have another gathering here in town? It's been quit a while since all of us got together and made a trip out to the drags. Let's get something going.

Eric

 

I was thinking about coming down on the 7th for the Friday night drags and staying overnight, but I can't prove or disprove that SIR is open that night. The one place indicates they are open every Friday night for test -n- tune but the schedule doesn't show them being open.

Would someone from down there be able to verify they would be open?

Anyone else up for a Phoenix-Tucson road trip on Friday Feb. 7th?

 

I just checked the schedule and it shows it not being open. So I jst called and they said that they won't be open. The person who answered the phone wasn't sure why though.

 

Well that figures. LOL

 

Chris,
Are you still coming down tomorrow? Let me know so we can make some plans. I am still off tomorrow, so we can hit some j/y's. I really want to find my two tone gray and black 4th gen seats! Do you still have my number?

Is anyone else coming down? We can have a little gathering of sorts. Thomas

 

Not this weekend. I'm looking at doing a junkyard crawl on the 7th down there. I have a event on the 8th I'm attending and figured I would drive down a day early and relax. I deleted all my pm's accidentally, but could have sworn that's when you and I were getting together.

Good news is I got my new Accel 19# injector's in last night and the BLM's looked fantastic this morning per the scanner. We'll see what the sniffer says this afternoon. <fingers crossed>

I would like to see a bunch of us hit a Sonic for dinner or something Friday night Feb. 7th, say 6-6:30 ish, anyone else like that idea??

 

I'm game for that. Which sonic though? Golflinks and Pantano? Hey Thomas, if you want to still hit the J/Y let me know. I have Friday off also and I'm looking at possibly going out to see if I can find some seats also.


Eric

 

Eric,
You have mail. What time do you want to go? I am ready to find some new seats!!! Thomas

 

Chris,

Did you pass the sniffer test?

Yeah, I remembered that you were coming down next weekend. I must have been tired when I posted that last night. You have new mail with my number. Thomas

 

No, didn't pass. It's at a shop right now. It's either the air system, the cat or I have something in the timing so screwed up....

Probably the latter. The scans look fine, blms, temps, pressures iac steps, or at least they look *normal* to an untrained person like me.

As soon as I hear anything I'll pass it on, becuase as of today I will have exhausted my 30 day grace period and will not be able to drive the car, as the license plates will have expired.

 

I bolted on everything from my "Emissions crap" box, drove to emissions, passed, and went back home and removed it all. I thought all fuel injected motors were that easy.

 

Sigh. They are. You just have to boil all the other problems out before you can ID the "real" problem.

The car has finally passed 2 of the 3 tests, CO and NOX. The repair station is already in the process of attaching a new cat this afternoon, and then I will have final numbers. Long and short, I was told by the personnel at the testing station that because my NOX #'s were so low, that they believed any problem I had would not be cat related.

Taking that into account, I repaired/replaced everything else that showed up as marginal. The saddest part is that had the station called me, I would have told them to stop and put a Catco cat on and saved myself a couple hundred $. I would have taken that couple hundred and put a cat-back on it instead. As it stands they were already in the process of installing a $275 cat. Sigh. Oh well, it'll be 2 more years before I have to go through this again.

Thanks to everyone that helped. If it weren't for this board I would have left my sanity back several repairs ago.
I'm ready to do a cruise somewhere, as this car is darn near perfect.

 

And it STILL hasn't passed! I'm unbelievable irate. CO numbers are way down from 11.80 to 1.79 where 12.00 is passing, and Nox from .9 to .3 when 2.50 is passing, but those numbers were already in the green. The number (HC) that needed to come down went WAY up. It was at 1.19 and is now at 5.71, when passing is 1.00. I'm out $398. I'm going to go get drunk now. Thank goodness there was beer already in the fridge.

 

You're running rich probably. Lean that bad boy out and you should pass fine. HC is where I almost get nailed too, but I barely pass every year somehow.

And if all else fails... keep a can of compressed air in yer car, and pump it into your exhaust when you get tested.

 

I hate to admit it, but the $400 the garage tore out of my wallet on Friday for the catalytic converter, and the anticiapted $150 molestation tomorrow when I drop the car back off there to get it all finalized has destroyed any chance I had to come down this weekend.

I was really looking forward to coming down and joining ya'll, but it will have to wait until my wallet can recover.

 

That's cool. Just let us know when you can make it down.

 

Sigh, having read through the horrors of passing smog checks brings back memories of when I lived in California.

Now that I'm considering moving to Arizona, I want to be careful not to reside within the smog-check areas.

Are there any detailed maps available showing "which side of the street" I'd have to live on to avoid this hassle?

Is it limited to Phoenix and Tucson?

It's painful reading what that fine-looking Firebird is going through ... unusual though, to see a TPI have that much trouble passing, they mostly run pretty clean.

 

If you live in Maricopa County (where Phoenix is) you have to be smog tested. If you live outside of that (other than the Tucson area which I know nothing about) you are not tested. There are some people here at work that live in the next county, about a 30 mile one way drive, that have enjoyed poking fun at my dilema.

I'm disappointed, naturally, but when I look at it I would have to say that 14x,000 miles on an 11 year old car, and the only things I've had to do to date were tune-ups and oil changes, I'm still ahead of the game. I've owned it for 4 years now and really didn't have any trouble the last time it went through smog testing. It's a good solid car and it'll pass eventually.

I think if anyone had questioned the cat. prior to me dropping it off at the garage I would have swapped it and saved myself a little dough. As it stands the numbers the cat. helped were already passing numbers(shrug). It's all good, as the car will be darn near showroom perfect mechanically when it finally passes LOL.

Thanks for the compliments, they are always good to hear, especially right now

 

The last I heard, if you live outside the Tucson city limits, you're smog exempt.

cg91ta - Is the engine all stock?

 

It is right now, even has the air filter canister and a paper air filter in it. The only thing I left alone was the TB coolant bypass, and I'm running Mobil1 in it.

I think it's going to need a AFPR here soon, as the fuel pressure seemed a little weak at 43#, and I *may* go back to the platinum +4's as these AC Delco standard plugs seem a little weak.

 

cg91ta -- am just checking in to see if there's been any progress in getting past the smog check....

 

Oh yes. That Tuesday it went back to the garage and came within 1/100th of passing. The garage tweaked it some more and the HC shot up to 3.xx again that evening. I had a long conversation with the mechanic that night and brought it back Wed. morning. The only thing he could think of was a dirty top end/intake. I told him that when I had the runners out to do the injectors there appeared to be a nice layer of black inside the runners and plenum, but that I hadn't had anything to clean it with.
Wed. morning I called to check up on it and was informed that the intake was the worst they'd seen. They ended up running 2 full treatments of some chemical through the intake (NOT the fuel system). Then, without them making any changes to the base timing, I took it past the testing station that evening. The final numbers were:

HC .23 (passing is 1.00) down from 3.xx the night before
CO 2.39 (passing is 12.00) down from a high of 39.xx
NOX .5x (passing is 2.50) this had always passed.

The down side is that this chemical finished taking out my IAC. I have unplugged it until I can replace it with something that has more than a 3 month warranty on it.

Whew, glad that's over for another 2 years.

I can't say enough about the help I got on the boards. Willie and Tim Burgess helped me retain my sanity through this ordeal. :hail: :hail:

 

Failing emissions from crap in the intake... I never would've thought of that. When I ported my plenum I noticed a lot of black "crap" inside the plenum and runners. Turned out the oil return passages in the heads are a little clogged (still are) and the PCV valves were shooting raw oil into my throttle body. I have breathers now... they just shoot oil onto the valve covers.

 

Ahhh, gotta hate blowby. Good to hear you finally passed.

 

So if you are running breather caps on the valve covers, what do you do on the TB and plenum? Aren't those a controlled vacuum source?

 

The PCV valves in the covers are just an emissions thing to take gasses built up in the crankcase (through blowby and stuff) and put it into the intake where it can be burned, reducing emissions. I put breathers on the valve covers and vacuum plugs on the throttle body. I also have plugged off the charcoal canister, the EGR controls, and the vacuum for the a/c controls. The only things that use vacuum on my car are the brakes, the fuel regulator, and the MAP sensor. My throttle body and plenum have a lot of little rubber plugs all over it.