Tx951Dude

Okay, I'm up for the yearly state emissions test here in the Dallas, TX area. My car has failed two years in a row and I've spent thousands making it legal in order to pass after those failures. My car "should" pass this year but I'm not up for having it fail again. Is there a local shop that you guys use to have your cars tested? The local City Garage, Mobil1 Express or tune up shop just wants to sell you something that you don't need and I don't want to deal with that. I can tune my car, change the oil and do most anything that doesn't require welding but I have no way to make sure my car will pass the emissions test prior to taking it in.

I'm two weeks away from an expired sticker. Please Help!

Red1

Why did it fail before? CO? NOx? If it fails, there's a reason.

Tx951Dude

Wish I could just scan in the report sheet from last year. But this is the jest of it:

HC(ppm): 141 Pass - High Speed 177 Fail - Low Speed
CO(%): 0.69 Pass - High Speed 0.68 Pass - Low Speed
Nox(ppm): 2269 Fail - High Speed 2177 Fail - Low Speed
Dilution: 14.79 Pass - High Speed 14.88 Pass - Low Speed

The car came from Michigan where it wasn't necessary to have emissions testing. The original cat was trash so I spend a fortune having that replaced after the first that it failed in 2004. Then it passed without problem. Took it in last year and it failed again. Problem was traced to another bad cat which I had replaced under warranty from the previous year. The car passed again after having that cat replaced last year.

I just don't need a repeat performance from the past two years. I only drive the car about 3,000 miles a year so there's no way it should even fail again. But I don't want to risk taking it in again and spending $40 for nothing.

Ski

Rhob just had his car tested in Memphis, I know they do HC and CO. Pass is 220 on the HC, he was at 60, CO is 1.2% and he was at .35%. This was on a car with LR II MAF, stock injectors with 38# of FP, Mafterburner had the car dithering between 14.5-14.9. He passed with flying colors.

Get the car warm, do not test it cold.

Tx951Dude

Thanks Ski. Yep, I heard from some other folks that the car must be warm to test. The challenge is finding a shop that doesn't want to sell me something like a tune up in order to pass the car. Ruf Auto Centre here in Dallas does the work on my car if there's anything that needs to be done that I can't do myself. I trust them but they don't do state inspections. Most of the shops here that do inspections can't get to your car right away when you bring it in and forces you to wait until the car cools down before they even touch it.

wolfenstein

emissions is a racket i had techs in a dealership disconnecting the cooling fans to get new cars to pass. find a local garage ask around see who's an independant and try them

Red1

Your Nox is way high. You either have a vacuum leak or your TPS is not adjusted correctly. BTDT.

ShApE

I would go to some place off of Division St. in Arlington. My friend took his 500hp rx7 to one of the many random shops and they passed him lol.

Tx951Dude

Red1, okay, now this was BEFORE they replaced my cat. I'll try to dig up the report AFTER the cat was replaced. I agree with Wolf, the emissions thing is a huge racket and most are in it just to sell you something that you don't need just to get the stupid window sticker. I'm in Richardson ShApE so the drive to Arlington wouldn't be a quick one for me but thanks for the advice. I may end up just doing that!