since im gonna need plates here eventually since my AZ plates are only good till november, i did the damn smog test today, and to my surpise, i failed.... i had it tested in az 2 years ago and it passed no problem.....

i dont have the sheet in front of me buy i think my NOX was 2-3x over what is allowed...

i have relativealy new plugs/wires/etc... about 16k on them... the car has 116k, i wonder if its time for a new cat?

could the fact that its been almost 8 months since i had the oil changed (im still 1k away from the 3k, the car was in storage for 4 months) and that i have both oil treatment and gas treatment in the car?

 

What mods have been done to the car? First thing to check would be the EGR valve operation.

 

mods? i really dont have any to speak of, other than an MSD cap and rotor, MSD wires and ngk plugs & a K&N panel filter

 

Which county do you live in?

 

Lake

i just moved back from Maricopa County AZ (phoenix) and had it tested there almost 2 years ago and it passed fine

 

I looked up the Indiana county map. You're right there on the IN/IL border. Since you're so close to IL, something you might want to look into is getting your car licensed and registered there. Last year, IL dropped it's emissions testing for all 1995 and earlier vehicles.

http://www.epa.state.il.us/air/vim/

Since your plates are still good and you passed AZ emissions on your last test, it's possible that they may just issue you IL plates without having to do another inspection. Worth a shot at least.

 

nah, if i was gonna do that, i'd just get a buddy of mine in flagstaff AZ to get me a PO box and register it there, since illinois requires front plates and i just had another new bumper put on my car that has no holes, and i dont plan on drilling into it for a plate holder, or my sister could maybe reg it down in lafayette...

its interesting that illinois, the big polluter of chicago, dropped testing for 1995 and older cars, but yet indiana who's 4 counties closest to chicago only run emissions because of chicago, still require 95 and older cars to run the dyno test

 

check you EGR system it control's NOX. If there is no problems there i would start looking into a nice 3 way cat.

 

take a piece of steel cable from a spare throttle cable or brake cable for a bike or something. put it in a drill...put drill in REVERSE. run it through a few times to remove carbon buildup...

try this then replace if it doenst work.

 

i was just looking at the results again, NOx allowed was 2.5 and i had 2.7 and HC i failed as well with about double what was allowed...

 

check the cat. it may be poisoned

 

what is the best way to check the cat, and if the cat is bad, should i go with a high flow cat like a magnaflow or something or just a stock one?

 

If your Hc's are high then i would deffinitly look into a new cat.