Re: 82 spider failed emissions test

[Carlo_Cardilli@domain.elided]

Exact same thing happened to me.  I would advise you against trying to fix
this yourself (I'm sure this will provoke a flood of comments).  If you
don't get it right you risk getting labelled as a gross polluter by CARB
next time you test, and then, quite simply, you're screwed.

If you're in the SF Bay area, I recommend you go to Roger's Autoworkz in
Oakland.  He has an exhaust analyzer and does this very frequently,
including to my 86 spider that had the exact same problem (failing HC at
idle with low CO%).  It took him 15 minutes to fix and having made sure it
passed he ran the "official" smog test then and there.  I think it was $35
for the whole thing including the retest fee.

Alternatively, you could try bumping up the idle by a few hundred RPMs.
HCs shoud go down (and CO% up), hopefully enough to make sure you passed.
A friend of mine claims to have beat the test like this, and I have never
seen the tester check the idle speed against a reference.  I'd like to see
what fellow Alfisti think of this.

Last - Did you warm up the car when you tested it?  Those cat converters
need to get pretty hot before they reach max effectiveness.

Carlo
86 spider quad


>>From: "G.R. Steinke"
>>My 82 spider (with 135k miles and Bosch EFI) just failed the California
>>emissions test. Here's the results:

>>At idle
>>
>>Type     Max Allowed   Measured
>>HC PPM   120           209 <<<<<<<<<<<Fail

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