failed smog

[mhanch]

I'm really lucky. Washington has a Vintage Plate with no renewal or emissions. Makes life easy.

[Helirich]

Sorry for the negative cali talk.

How are facts negative? Well I guess they can be interrupted to be negative by critical thinking people.

[Rich]

Congratulations on sticking it out until you got a well-sorted powertrain - and a CA smog certificate. Along with a bonus head gasket job.

Thanks for the end-of-project debrief you shared. That's the kind of thing this forum's made for.

I hope you don't mind me editing your post down to the following list of your 8 findings, all useful.

What we have learned...

(A) leaning out or running rich made very minimal differences in smog- not enough to change results unless you are very close to fail with ppm or co possibly? - nothing with nox

(B) The car was miss firing under load and had bad connection on plug- no difference in smog test results at any point.

(C) It IS possible to burn out an original catalytic converter to a point where there is nothing in it. And its possible in less that 2000 miles.

(D) The dgo cat will not pass ca smog.

(E) see attached tests... one is dgo and the other a good used original cat given to me by Mhanch. (i owe you big time and still waiting for your venmo) THE ONLY CHANGE TO CAR BETWEEN TWO ATTACHED TESTS WAS THE CAT

(F) Injectors made no difference.

(G) plugs made no difference.

(H) valve adjustments made no difference.. Its all catalytic converter!

I guess the positive out of all this is that the car is pretty well sorted at this point.

Thank you all. I hope this helps someone in the future!!!

Dave

[glockworks21]

Thank you Rich!!
^^^

[Helirich]

Thank you Rich!!
^^^

Yea, it would be good if the admin could post Rich?s list at the beginning of this thread for future searchers. Something like ?if you don?t want to read the whole thing, here are the cliffs?

[gluaisrothaii]

They base registration on county, price paid on vehicle, length of ownership ect ect. Nice that yours is that low.

Mine was $386 for registration - that is with custom plate ($50 I think)
The rest was late fees.. I never non oped it mainly because I dont know or want to deal with the process to get it off of non op.
I was happy to pay the late fees to get this behind me. at least for the next 2 years..

Sorry for the negative cali talk. Its just seems to be a money grab ( the smog testing i mean) There was talk of raising the vehicle smog year up to mid 90s but the bill didnt pass. I really want the stage one setup and would have got it right away when all this started. Danny at DMC said it passes emissions but will fail visual because for whatever reason the state wont approve it They are working on a california stage one that passes visual with correct stamping... Seems they dont really care if a stage one passes or maybe even runs cleaner(idk) but since they didnt approve it you dont get it. Thats where the negativity comes from )

Thanks again for all the support.

I have the DMCH stage 1 and have passed Alameda County smog three times in a row for emissions and the visual inspection. The smog tech is detail oriented and reads the EO end to end every time before he signs it off. Danny is incorrect here. Photo attached for reference.IMG_1407.jpg

[glockworks21]

I was going through paperwork that came with the car. tons of receipts, magazines, ect. and I ran across this one....
dated 2010---35,363 miles..

I had to share the third catagory on this receipt

"found exhaust manifolds leaking. Removed exhaust system and replaced exhaust manifold gaskets and hardware.
CLEANED OUT catalytic converter due to cat falling apart...."

So this was 11 years before I got the car. (also only 1500 miles put on in that time) and according to this the cat was hollowed out.. So if this receipt is accurate then i did not burn out the cat in a short amount of time. And that begs the question as to how did the car pass when i got it here
Im not looking for answers.. Just thought it would be fun to share and add to the mystery....

[Rich]

Thanks for clearing up that background.

I'll point to a possible answer anyway. It looks like the shop that smogged your car 2yrs ago after you brought it into Calif. cheated to get it to pass.

That was the theory in Posts 32-33 of this thread. If I understand the reports your car (with what we now know was an empty cat) "passed" the test and got certified a little over 2yrs ago.

There are a few ways for a smog shop to arrange for that to happen, all of them illegal. And then the same shop couldn't get the same car, still with an empty cat, to pass smog late last year? No surprise if the shop ran a legit test in '24.

The Calif. Bureau of Automotive Repair has an active enforcement program in place to curb smog test cheating. Over a recent 6 year period they shut down about 200 smog shops per year for smog test fraud. Up to you but if you want the BAR to look into how the non-compliant car somehow "passed" CA smog 2 yrs ago you can report your story to them. Looks like the shop caused you a lot of grief.

I was going through paperwork that came with the car. tons of receipts, magazines, ect. and I ran across this one.... dated 2010---35,363 miles.. I had to share the third catagory on this receipt "found exhaust manifolds leaking. Removed exhaust system and replaced exhaust manifold gaskets and hardware. CLEANED OUT catalytic converter due to cat falling apart...." So this was 11 years before I got the car. (also only 1500 miles put on in that time) and according to this the cat was hollowed out.. So if this receipt is accurate then i did not burn out the cat in a short amount of time. And that begs the question as to how did the car pass when i got it here Im not looking for answers.. Just thought it would be fun to share and add to the mystery....

[Bitsyncmaster]

As I suspected, the CAT would not blow out on it's own.

[AugustneverEnds]

This confirms the only way to for CAT equipped car to pass California emissions without a CAT is by cheating. I'm sorry this was such a frustrating, expensive, and time consuming process for you.