,.

 

Visible smoke? I have never heard of failing for that before.
You might consider another shop, do you trust this one. If your brakes are new, they may very well be trying to scam you. Do you know how to check the brakes, or atleast know anyone who does.
Failing for suspention is a new one too.
What part of emissions did you fail, or did they just tell you that you failed and not give you anything?

 

Yeh, they automaticly failed me cause there was some smoke coming out of the back when they did the brake test ( doesnt smoke anymore, but doubt it would pass )

This isnt a little road side shop, its Rahway Motor Vehicles.... one of the biggest ones here, like... the " Main " one

 

Alot of times the little shops will do a better job than the big places. Who would trust sears for an alignment? I would rather pay the extra $20 and do it at a shop.
There was a commercial I saw recently somthing like this "state inspections only $10, most cars need less than $100 of work to pass". In reality most cars need nothing to pass, they just find stupid things, charge you $5 to top off your wiper fluid and such.

How do they do the brake test? Here they just check the pads.
Smoke out the back doesn't mean it will fail the sniffer, smoke anti-freeze, or oil, the sniffer doesn't pick those up. And just how in the hell did they decided your suspention needed to be done to pass inspection?

I'm not familar with NJ inspection, but I would go to another shop, tell them what happend and ask if it sounds odd.

 

If you have the time to do your brakes yourself you could save the time and money and possibly being scammed. changing the front (pads) is simple and the back isnt real hard (shoes) either. even inspecting them is simple. some shops will say you need new parts and charge you for them and not put them on. I wonder how it is the shop you went to all of a sudden has suspension experts on hand and decided that it needed work? someone is blowing smoke out their @$#.
If you failed emmissions its rather hard to diagnose why without a chart or numbers showing what your readings were and what you failed on. theres guys here that could give you some indication as to WTH is wrong, usually its the cat, but it could be any number of things. the shop should at least give you some paperwork showing what your car failed on, if not then how do they expect you to correct it?

on a side note I dont trust any shop to work on my camaro, since ive had my car completely apart and back together a few times-who needs a shop??? this particular car (F-body) is quite simple to understand once youve had time to learn about it, you can be the expert.

PyRo: might have something there the little shops-dont have a big turn-around/qouta they have to meet for the month-thus they may actually look at rather then speculate. Sears-sorry they cant even put hub caps on properly.

 

He may or may not have to do the pads, he is either being ripped off by these inspection guys (probably), or the people who supposedly did his brakes.
Where did he say they had the suspention parts on hand?
They didn't even put it on the sniffer they just saw smoke and said it failed, so it might actually pass emitions we have no way of knowing.

I'm still really weary of this place.

 

Yep, they will fail you automatically if the car starts smoking. Kinda makes sense since smoke is a good indicator of the internal state of the engine. If its the rings, some of the oil treatments do work to stop smoke. Learned that the hard way when I bought my very first car. The emmisions could be a dead cat, failing O2, state of tune, etc.

As for the brakes, Check the pads as well as the rotors/drums. Check to make sure that there isnt any noticable scoring or excessive wear. From what Ive seen, alot of these guys like to poke around a bit when they inspect the car, and big scores or grooves worn into the rotors will probably cause the car to fail. Also make sure the car brakes straight and doesnt have a mushy/falling pedal. Take it out to a parking lot and hit the brakes with your hand off the wheel and make sure it brakes straight. Shouldnt pull to the side. It also shouldnt dive excessivly, either, but thats a suspention problem. If you feel a chatter or pulsation in the pedal, then the rotors are worn or the drums are out of round and will need to be cut or replaced. If it pulls, check the alighnment as well as the condition of the calipers/all the stuff in the brake drums. In the drums, the adjuster mechanism has a tendancy not to self adjust after awhile when it gets rusty and the rear brakes are rendered pretty much useless. Youll need to disassemble the drum brake assy. and clean/grease the adjuster mechanism and the contact serfaces around the brake shoes and make sure the wheel thingy moves at least somewhat freely with the brakes assembled. Also not a bad idea to replace the wheel cylinders as well. Lastly, if the pedal has excessive travel that doesnt go away with servicing the rest of the brake system or the F/R brakes dont seem to work, then youll probably also want to check and replace the master cylinder.

As for the suspention, make sure the shocks are still good. Usually jsut pushing down on the car will reveal bad shocks/struts. The car should only bounce up and down once or twice after you release it. If it just keeps bouncing up and down or you can get it to really move up and down then the shocks and struts are worn. Go under the car and inspect the suspention as well as the rubber bushings and make sure they arnt all rotted out and cracked. Grease it as well. There should also be no funny rattles coming from the suspention over bumps and the car shoudlnt make clunking noises when the wheels are turned (worn ball joints). Of coarse, also make sure there are no broken or sagging springs. Oh, almost forgot, if you havnt done so, get an alighnment. Although if it was bad, they probably would have been more specific.

Ummm... thats about all I can think of for now...

 

if its actually the state run place, first, they don't actually have to know what they are doing. They are simply there to run the machines and push cars through.....don't even really need to know how a car works. scary huh?

the braking tester is a sort of a skid test, where they accelerate the car, and stop on these 4 pads, which spit out the braking force per wheel(which have to fall within certain limits), so if the guy running the place happens to say, I don't know....miss the pads, then they fail your fresh-off-the- showroom truck with brand new low mileage brakes on it. ask me how I know. 3rd gen camaros especially fall victim to this becuase of the non-functioning rear discs (early iron ones). There really is no visual inspection of the brakes unless its completely obvious something is wrong.

then the car gets jacked up on the frame, and they use a pry bar under the tires to check for ball-joint/strut looseness.

while they do this, the obd1 cars get sniffed, and the obd2 cars get scanned for dtc's.

then they check glass, parking brake, gas cap, turnsignals,horn, headlights/taillights.

if you make it through, you get a sticker. at least that how it worked last time I was through, 2 years ago. with the dyno testing, I dunno how much it has changed, but they didn't make me go through that......

 

I just failed today too! Go us!

But anyways, my car was being really weird when they were messing with it. When they first put it on the dyno, smoke just started flooding out of the tailpipes, which it has never done before. The person just looked at me and was like, "what the crap?" So that wasnt good. When the test was over he said I had failed miserably... grr. I get the sheet of paper and the car had to much hydrocarbons and NOx (whatever that is). I just put on a brand new cat. Any suggestions?

 

Nox is the EGR isn't it?

 

well thanks for the replies guys here is the info

 

for those who cant see it it says


Service Brake - Deceleration Sufficient

Front Axle- Passed

Rear Axle - Diffrence left/right axle excessive

 

Suspenension - Recall " Vehicle Specific Specifications " for possible better correlation with vheicle results

Suspension - FRONT AXLE - Check Tire Pressure

Left/Right -Check Suspension system components, recommended damper replacement

Left wheel - Check for broken or loose components , recommended damper replacement

right wheel - passed

 

as for the emmisons, i automaticly failed for visable smoke,

and for the brakes, i just payed a mechanic to change all the brakes, front and back, so its kind of like... what the hell did i actually pay for. ( even though there is much improvement in braking system )

sigh

 

Aside from the smoke and emmisions its stupid stuff. Id be willing to bet that it may just be as dumb as the rear brakes being out of adjustment. Easy enough to fix. Just pop the drum off and turn the adjuster untill the pads just drag on the drum. Id be willing to bet they never adjusted them properly when they changed the pads. Also looks like you need to replace the struts + shocks and check the tire pressure. Anyone know what they do to check the suspention at a state inspection station? I never use the state facilities so I wouldnt know.