I had my car inspected today and I failed the emissions badly. All I have is an intake, y-pipe, stock cat and APEX'i catback.

The only thing I can think of is that the cat is no good.

Any ideas?

Andrew

 

You use premium fuel right? If not then use 93 or 94 rated fuel. Also in my other car I used one of the fuel injector cleaner right before the emissions and the car passed with flying colors. So with the combination of both, it should do the trick.

 

you drove around w/that ypipe for about 1/2 hour right? Gotta warm that bish up before you put it through the test

 

I do use premium fuel.

I started the car (remote start) and let it run for about 10 minutes. Drove 15 minutes to the mechanics (Highway). Then drove another 5 to the other place where I left it idling until he took me in.

 

fuel wouldn't have failed you badly... when was your last major tuneup? I barely passed with intake and greddy catback.. it could be a bad cat, but if is bad, wouldn't it smell like rotten eggs?

 

I don't know, but I was reading an article in Modified Mag about the cat and they showed a pic where the filter in the cat had a hole in it allowing engine fumes to go right out into the environment. That's what got me thinking.

 

hmm

i'm assuming you already tried fishing for codes and haven't noticed your car running crappy?

these are probably stupid questions, but process of elimination.

 

How old are your O2 sensors? I changed mine a week before I retested (no codes but 140K on them), and some of my emission went down by more than half when compared to the first test.

 

how high was the hydro carbon count? when my buddy tested his car (1992 pulsar) the maximum allowed was .8 his was 2.9 he got a tune up and tested again and passed

 

pay $70 and have them hook it up to a 04' mb...i garranteeeee you will pass.
i do that cause i hate it when they rev my car on the spinning thing

 

Out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone has modded a Cali-spec car and also failed emissions outside of Cali? I kind of like the idea of getting a Cali-spec car to avoid problems in lesser states, like PA (our emissions testing is a joke, can you say $$$?). Now those cars can be bought in NJ as well as NY,MA,CT,RI,NH,ME. They say by the end of 2k5 CA is gonna tighten up even more on the C02 figure, so those states will probably also follow suit.

Which value is failing on some of the modded cars, that would be interesting to know.

 

In Florida they stopped emission testing all together!!! Why exactly, well I dont know but it sure as hell beats having to deal with problems like the ones listed above to pass. No headaches for us Floridians (except for 3 consecutive threatening hurricanes)

 

Thats usually what I do.

However depending on your mileage it might just be your sensors crapping out on you. The pre cats on the Y pipe dont do much other than clean the air during start up. If your cat was going bad usually you could hear the bricks jumping around.

 

Luckily one of my dad's patients/friends owns a shop and we've been taking our cars to him forever and he recommended this shop and when I failed they called him and asked them to hook it up to another car. So they used the exhaust from a Hyndai Elantra.

But I still want to know why I failed.

 

luckily in GA they just plug you in, check, and you're good to go