Alright, the last owner of this car unhooked the air pump and put a pre-silencer in instead of the cat, now ive just gone and put in a whole new exhaust system and i have rb header to bonez high flow cat to y-pipe to dual mufflers with 2.5" piping all the way through, the air pump IS hooked up to the cat and everything, but i just went to get an emissions check to make sure i was passing and they told me it was HORRIBLE and i was running way too rich... my question is why and what to do? does timing have anything to do with emissions? cuz i advanced my timing a little and was wondering if that was part of it, i didnt advance it all that much so i dont think it would account for all of it.. but what should i do? any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated as i dont want to burn up my cat cuz im running too rich, plus i have to pass emissions this year... thx in advance

 

Time to pour some majic emmissions passing juice into the gas tank.

 

Bonez hi-flo, not gonna pass emissions. Turn the timing back and put a real cat on there. We don't have emissions testing in NY so thats about the only advice I can give. I have the Bonez, and Im pretty sure that it doesn't function like a proper cat would. Its for power and freeing up flow, not passing emissions.

 

ive been told you can still pass emissions with the bonez high flow cat, plus what is the point of having a cat that doesnt pass emissions? i mean why would they sell it? you might as well just have a pre-silencer or gutted cat


also, ive been told that if i dont fix the richness then im just going to burn up the cat and its going to be useless, so i want to get this in proper working order and be able to pass, i dont want to have to pour alcohol in my gas tank to pass the test

 

The Bonez does pass emmissions from what I have heard. My friend wankel7 has one on his TII. I am pretty sure that he had to pass before he moved to Texas.

 

I may be wrong. I just cant see my car passing emissions. That cat doesnt seem to stop much

 

The Bonez cat is an excellant product. If the car is running properly, you should pass emissions just fine...

Now, obviously your car isn't running properly. Start with a full tuneup. Change all fluids, plugs, wires, filters, adjust TPS, etc. Set the timing, replace the O2 sensor, etc. It's amazing what a good tuneup can do. Don't put any crap in your gas unless it's a last resort.

By the way, it would help if you posted your emissions results.

 

I passed PA Emissions with flying colors with my RB Header, Bonez High-flow cat, Greddy Cat-back. And my Turbo2 passes MA Emissions with the same result with RB downpipe, Bonez High-flow cat, and RB cat-back. Here is the scan from my N/A..



Notice the 0% 02 and the almost non-existant HC My car almost qualifies as a 0 emissions vehicle.

No, its definately a problem with his car, not the cat.

 

results CO/HC:

idle - 4.2 / 1800

cruise - 5.4 / 680


ok yah after looking at rxmfn7 results, somethings seriously wrong here, what the **** is my car doing

 

We don't? I'm pretty sure we do. Maybe it's different upstate?

 

Sounds like a standard tuneup issue. Do the tuneup. If it is still that rich at idle, you might want to *look into* adjusting the idle per factory/Haynes manual instructions. I normally don't recommond someone just messes with the adjust screws, but it is possible that yours has been messed with before...

 

alright, thx for the help aaron, ive decided im going to take into mazda with my emissions info and schedule a full tuneup as well as an emissions inspection, hopefully it will be fixed after this... i already set the timing back to stock too

 

If you can, do it yourself. Mazda will be useless.

 

My car ran almost identically to Rxmfn7's, except my numbers were even better thanks to about a 50/50 mix of gas / denatured alcohol, which ran surprisingly well on my NA. I wouldn't try it on a turbo tho. Heh. And I'm getting a turbo now. Oh well. This year is gonna suck for emissions, for sure.

Oh, and I had a bonez high-flow cat then too, and have a 3" bonez blank ready for my custom 2.5"/3" combo exhaust setup. I cleaned the ACV thoroughly, tested each solenoid, and modified it to give a little bit more air through the split air pipe too, a mod that was promptly removed after emissions testing due to the cat getting DAMN hot. After a while, the air pipe broke off though, and I ran the car without it for probably 6-7 months. It seemed to be fine, for those of you who care.

Anyway, sorry to be so long, but again, it ain't the cat. And I hope I've shared a few borderline but not completely illegal tricks for you to tweak to help. Good luck, and search. There are a boatload of good posts on this subject.

 

I ran through emissions with my Cork sport single Cold Air box and Bonez superflo downpipe/High flow Cat and passed the first time without any problems so saying that about bonez is a lie.

BTW I had the Superflo on my car for 6 months before I had to be tested so it lasted that long too.

 

the air pump IS hooked up to the cat and everything

This caught my eye.

Why is your airpump hooked up to your cat? Is that the way it is with High flow cats or something? Because my airpump, well when I had one, was hooked up to the lower intake manifold, not the cat.

Weird. But maybe I donno. Been such a long time since I had an airpump on a functioning Rx.

Are you shooting flames?

 

uhm, the air pump is supposed to be hooked up to the middle of the cat. the first part of the cat is oxygen reduction, the second part (which uses the pumped air), is for reapplying oxygen (i forget the term; oxidation doesnt sound right). an air pump hooked to a manifold is COMPLETELY wrong. its unregistered air. thats just bad.

okay, post ALL your numbers from the sheet they should have given you. also, post the fail limit (which you obviously exceeded in a couple of areas).
in TX, i had 6 total. 3 for 15mph, 3 for 25mph.

 

Bonez makes my car clean as a whistle. Make sure your trailing plugs are firing at the right time, and not 180 degrees off. In that case, you would have other symptoms, but one of them will be a glowing cat.

 

Maybe I'm confuseded.

The airpump is belt driven. It is the unit that is on the left side of the engine above the omp and to the left of the waterpump, right? It has a hose that goes to the lower intake manifold. The cat has a metal pipe that eventually becomes a diafram and then that diafram is hooked up to another hose that also goes to the LIM.

Err, me thinking of something else?

 

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE TO DO IS CHANGE THE DAMN O2 SENSOR, I HAD A PROBLEM PASSING IN ILLINOIS, AND WHEN I CHANGE THE 02 IT PASSED, BUT KEEP IN MIND YOU MIGHT HAVE TO ADJUST THE AIR FUEL MIXTURE TOO LIKE I HAD TO NOW MY CAR RUNS GREAT.

 

The airpump should be connected to the ACV, which in turn controls how much air and under what condition it gets re-piped back to the cat. Your airpump should NOT be connected DIRECTLY to the cat. This will definitely **** up your emissions, and will fry your cat since it is combusting all the unused exhaust gas right there in the cat (lacking ACV control), instead of in the exhaust manifold BEFORE the cat (due to ACV control), thus overheating your cat. At least, that's the way I understand it to be, and that's the way mine was when I passed emissions. YMMV.

 

This will definitely **** up your emissions, and will fry your cat since it is combusting all the unused exhaust gas right there in the cat


Yeah, zats what I thought too.

Shoot flames. **** emissions.

 

yah thats what ive heard about mazda, but the one in my area is actually pretty good, my friends auto-tech class had a 2nd gen rx7 as a project car and the mazda dealership by me was extremely helpful to them

 

I wasn't trying to lie to the guy man. I was just under the impression that a high flow cat is not as efficient as a regular cat in filtering exhaust gases. But, I've never had to take an emissions test, so I'm wrong. No lies, just the wrong answer.

 

Actually, a high flow cat is theoretically BETTER since there is MUCH more surface area on the cat brick to process the gasses. In a cat, surface area is everything, and high flow units, if they are made well like the Bonez (which is even CARB certified), should be fully expected to outperform their lower flow / stock siblings, in both flow rate AND conversion capability.