Took my car for inspection today and it failed emissions. Here are the readings

HC was .78 it should be up to .60
CO was 5.14 limit was 10 so this was ok.
NOx was 2.20 limit was up to 1.50

they ran twice, both times it failed. The guy was nice enough to hook me up (he had a supped up Jetta VR6), he said he's prob wouldn't pass either. Anyway to make the long story short, can this be cause of the Y pipe and the elimination of the pre cats or can it be something else? Any thoughts? I'd really appreciate it.

thx
Eugene

 

i guess NY emissions are different than GA ones... OBDII cars down here don't get the probe up the tail pipe to check readings, we just get something plugged into the ECU to check to make sure everything's working properly....

how long had the car been running prior to going to the emissions place? I've heard that after getting a y pipe the cars need to be warmed up for a while so the cat starts working... just my .02

 

I had no problems in CO, but I made shure the engine was warmed up, it was also in December when I had the test....

 

No I made sure the car was pretty hot when it went in there. I should be moving to Georgia.

 

NY has the second strictest emissions, Cali being number 1. We have a probe up our tail pipes and run on a dyno-like machine that has a track which you must keep upto speed. It runs for a few minutes with a few WOT runs as well as highway and local street speeds. Its actually a pretty cool machine. If you have fulltime AWD like a Subaru then they do the plug into the ECU. I really dont doubt you failed the test, it freggin sucks but your not the only one. I had a friend who failed too. I have to take mine in December so we'll see.

 

Drive your car for like 30 minutes right before the test and don't turn it off when you get there. You can try using some SeaFoam to get some carbon out and stuff http://www.aquatune.com/reports.html http://www.protecusa.com/tb_puragas.htm

http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothrea...ostid=12409106 Could be the O2s or cat

You can find more info on google or something. Search for "failed emission hc nox" or something like that

 

Cat is 7 years old with 81k miles on it. When do they usually go bad?

 

We have strict emisions here too. Pipe in the exhaust test etc. It's pretty safe to assume if you are failing and you have 120K your Cat is done. Yet you only have 81K, is this mostly city driving if it is could be time to replace it. I had one vehicle and at 120k the Cat actually blew up! Put a new one in and it flew through emissions reading better than it had for the previous three years. A 7 year old Cat is pretty old regardless of mileage, I'm sure you'll pass no probs with a new Cat, I'm sure your Y-pipe isn't the cause.

 

Can it be his O2 sensors. I had a 96 Sentra that failed. They replaced the O2 sensor and then it passed. It has been over two years ago, I don't recall my test numbers and which one failed.