Emissions...The saga continues.

[Fred Sacks <fredsacks@domain.elided>]

At the last installment, I failed NJ dynamometer emissions testing 
with high NOx, and very marginal HC and CO.  (The repost is below) 
Coming home tonight, the next chapter began.

Exiting Rt 295, the brake and water lights came on, and the car 
started missing.  In order not to stall at lights, I had to keep the 
engine at 2-3000rpm.  When accelerating, I left a cloud of smoke. 
Fortunately, I only had about a mile to drive from the time this 
started.

When I pulled into the driveway, I shut the car down, opened the hood 
and checked for tight connections, both in the fuel system and 
electrical system.
All appeared tight.  I am at 1/2 a tank of gas, so I doubt that gas 
is the culprit.  The only other time something like this happened, 
the attendant put regular gas in while I was giving directions to 
someone.  (It is illegal to pump your own gas in NJ)

Anayway, after no more than 5 minutes, I restarted the car, and it 
idled at exactly 950 rpm...steady.  Took the car out for a ride, and 
it revved freely, but had more popping on deceleration, and did seem 
to have some very, very minorpopping on acceleration. (unless you 
knew the car, you would think it ran great.)  But even under load, up 
hill, the car ran well.

I have to drive a distance tomorrow, so will rent a car.  (It still 
has never left me stranded.)  But I have the weekend to work on the 
car, and would like to have it ready for the NJAROC Fall Tour.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Fred SaCKS
89 GRADUATE

At 12:04 PM -0400 9/29/01, Fred Sacks wrote:
>I posted this question last weekend, either didn't get or somehow 
>missed a response. I really do need some help here.  (I only have 
>another couple of weeks to take the car back for inspection.)
>
>I'll add a couple of pieces:
>
>==The car runs great, both before and even stronger since the tune-up.
>
>==When I pulled the plugs, they were slightly carboned, not the 
>brownish color of a perfectly tuned engine.
>
>Here's the original post:
>
>It weems that there have been a number of emissions questions 
>recently on the list.  If this has already been covered, I'm sorry, 
>but here goes.
>
>The car is an 89 Graduate with 38,000 miles.
>
>When I took the car in for New Jersey State Inspection (Dynamometer 
>emissions testing) a month ago I failed. You can see the numbers 
>below.  When I got home, I looked under the hood and noticed that 
>the aftermarket air intake that I had installed became dislodged and 
>was letting significant amounts of unmetered air into the system.  I 
>thought that that was the problem.
>
>I replaced the aftermarket system with the stock system and a new 
>air filter, and checked the system for leaks.  Everything else was 
>tight.  (Although I am going to double check using the propane test 
>mentioned earlier this week in the digest.  While I was at it, since 
>the car had not been tuned in about 20,000 miles, I replaced the 
>plugs, (I'm trying the Bosch Platinum +4's), distributor cap and 
>wires, and cleaned up the rotor.  (The rotor that was sent to me was 
>the incorrect part, and I am waiting for the replacement.)
>
>Unfortunately, I lent my timing light to someone, and haven't gotten 
>it back yet,  but from what I'm reading on the list, it's use is 
>limited on the Bosch equiped system (then why are ther specs???), 
>but I need to buy a new one anyway for my other cars.
>
>Anyway, here are the numbers, along with state maximums.  No RPM 
>data is given.
>
>Item	Maximum		One month ago		Yesterday	Result
>
>NOx	1438		2245			1871		FAIL
>HC	187		229			186		Pass
>CO	1.05		.67			.69		Pass
>CO2	n/a		12.4			11.8		n/a
>O2	n/a		2.1			3.4		n/a
>
>Also, I notice an occasionally very slight "pop" "pop" on 
>deceleration at about 3000 rpm.  It may have been there before, and 
>I just never noticed.  As I said, It is slight.
>
>Thanks in advance for your help.
>
>Fred Sacks
>89 Graduate

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