Aircare / Emissions Testing - Failure and then Redemption!
10-27-07 | 09:30 PM
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Aircare / Emissions Testing - Failure and then Redemption!
I purchased my car from the previous owner about 2 years ago and was told that the car did not pass emissions testing (at least not without a lot of work) - it's fairly modded – see my signature. In any case, the Aircare emissions program here in Vancouver requires testing every 2 years, and I was due to bring it in. I installed a new Bonez HF cat and a new o2 sensor last week and brought the car in for testing, not really expecting to pass, but was surprised at the poor results: HC 1.6 g/km, CO 19.1 g/km, NOx 0.46 g/km. In comparison, the maximum allowable readings are: HC 0.5 g/km, CO 9.3 g/km, NOx 1.24 g/km. So the car failed miserably on HC and CO by quite a large margin, but passed on NOx. Looking at the graphs provided by the tester, the emissions were off the charts during acceleration to highway speeds as the tester got onto boost quite a bit.
After the test, I pulled the splitair pipe (connected to the cat) – no air was coming out of it – without air being fed to the cat it was little wonder that the car had failed . Next, I looked at the airpump - the clutch seemed to be working fine, but I took out the airpump hose anyways to see if it was working – it was, lots of air coming out of it - so it’s the ACV system that was the likely culprit. My solution was to run a hose directly from the airpump to the cat to fully bypass the faulty ACV system. I then rigged the airpump to run constantly by grounding it. (I just tapped the negative wire on the airpump and attached it to a grounding point on the firewall.) Prior to testing, the car was brought to full operating temperature, and to ensure emissions were as clean as possible, a gallon of methyl hydrate was added to the remaining quarter tank of gas just prior to driving to the testing facility.
I passed with the following readings:
HC 0.42 g/km, CO 1.28 g/km, NOx 0.75 g/km.
The previous owner was paying a $1000 every two years to have the work done by a rotary shop to rig this car to pass (not sure what was done to warrant $1000). I paid $30 for some heater hose, clamps, and methyl hydrate. (FYI, best place to purchase methyl hydrate would be a paint supply store, here in Vancouver, the ICI Paint chain stocks it in 1 litre and 1 gallon sizes.)
I haven’t reinvented the wheel here, but hopefully this post will provide some idea to those of you who are having trouble with smog testing.
After the test, I pulled the splitair pipe (connected to the cat) – no air was coming out of it – without air being fed to the cat it was little wonder that the car had failed . Next, I looked at the airpump - the clutch seemed to be working fine, but I took out the airpump hose anyways to see if it was working – it was, lots of air coming out of it - so it’s the ACV system that was the likely culprit. My solution was to run a hose directly from the airpump to the cat to fully bypass the faulty ACV system. I then rigged the airpump to run constantly by grounding it. (I just tapped the negative wire on the airpump and attached it to a grounding point on the firewall.) Prior to testing, the car was brought to full operating temperature, and to ensure emissions were as clean as possible, a gallon of methyl hydrate was added to the remaining quarter tank of gas just prior to driving to the testing facility.
I passed with the following readings:
HC 0.42 g/km, CO 1.28 g/km, NOx 0.75 g/km.
The previous owner was paying a $1000 every two years to have the work done by a rotary shop to rig this car to pass (not sure what was done to warrant $1000). I paid $30 for some heater hose, clamps, and methyl hydrate. (FYI, best place to purchase methyl hydrate would be a paint supply store, here in Vancouver, the ICI Paint chain stocks it in 1 litre and 1 gallon sizes.)
I haven’t reinvented the wheel here, but hopefully this post will provide some idea to those of you who are having trouble with smog testing.
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