I passed Illinois EPA emissions today

My 97 Formula is catless, no AIR Pump, No Egr. It all fell off one day somehow....... aww shucks!

It wouldn't pass the OBD-II readyness tests. So I took it to one of the bad *** local speed shops here and their tuner worked some pcm magic. Big props goes out to them. If you guys need info feel free to PM me.

Just wanted to share the good news to my LT1 OBD-II brothers and sisters out there. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Good Guys 1
Tree Huggers 0

Mike

 

no visual inspection?

you should be thankful whoever tested your car is a moron.

 

Maybe the score should have been:

Good Guys 0
Tree Huggers 0
Morons 1

 

They do no visual inspection in our state unless they are pre 95 and if you let them.

Yea I feel real bad for you guys in NJ, Cali, and other states where they do visuals.

Seriously these people don't make much money at the facilities, I really doubt they want to crawl on their hands and knees looking for cats in 30 degree weather. They just want these cars in and out.

They test the gas cap, then the plug the computer to the OBD-II dataport and SHAZAM! Your done! You either Pass, Fail, or get Rejected.

Mike

 

Oh and for the record I am very thankfull!

 

Nothing wrong with being happy.

 

I'm surprised you passed with having all of that stuff taken off.. which shop did you go to for the tuning?

 

Im not that suprised? If your car is in good tune, and is a reasonable decent fuel injection system, they will pass about 50% of the time. My dads f150 with a 5.0 in it had about 200K miles on it and passed the sniffer with no cat

Then it did it at about 230K and again another year later at about 260K. Granter he always did the maintenence on it, but thats the point im trying to make. Also, F-Bodies run a little lean from the facotry until you hit like 80% throttle or something like that and it goes into enrichment mode. Thats where everyone says a LT1 runs super rich.

Still though, commendable feat. I HATE emissions. I HATE Pittsbugh PA too. Emissions bull**** pisses me off badly.

 

2000GTP, I sent you a PM with the info.

Hardcore that is pretty awesome that your dad's F150 ran so well.

For the 96 and 97 fbodies they don't have to go on the sniffer. Which is kind of nice if you have a wild engine setup that won't pass the sniffer. You can just plug and go, and be on your merry way.

The main reason I posted this, is because in the past there have been several folks who have wondered if us LT1 OBD-II guys could pass emissions as easy as the LS1 OBD-II cars. But it always would turn into a skeptical debate that the LS1 cars were easeir to tune to pass the OBD-II emissions tests.

Well there are a couple of posts that I had came across on here by using the good ole' search feature, that some folks had been sucessfull at passing the OBD-II test with their 96 or 97 lt1 fbods with long tubes and deleted emission equipment. I pretty much took information from those posts, and tried to do a little research. And there was a gray area that was uncertain if you can program the pcm to pass the OBD-II "ready" tests via just pure tuning.

And the fact is, if you goto the right tuner and you have o2 simms for the rear o2 connectors, you can pass the OBD-II "ready" tests. Your allowed to have a minimum of two "not ready" monitors. The only monitor that would not go to "ready" status was the Catalyst Monitor Test. But I was struggling to get my EGR, AIR, and O2 Sensor Monitor tests to ready even with the o2 simms. This is where I had to let the pro's take a crack at it. And they were able to do it. IMO most likely one or two of the top mail order pcm guys have probably learned how to edit the OBD-II pcm to get it to pass.

I just want to clear up for the records that YES it can be done, and has been done. And I am very happy because of that

Mike

 

lucky you, I'm in California....they check everything.

 

Dang. I heard the Governator isn't making things go well for the old school muscle cars and rods out there, and their trying to make them take emissions too. Heard anything about that?

Mike

 

I lived in Los Angeles for 9 years and never took a smog test. At the time my car wasn't sold in Ca. so it didn't have the correct smog sticker. I just kept it liscensed in Al. which was cheaper for the tag and didn't have to pay the $300.00 to get the sticker. It would pass the sniffer test though.

 

For me the concern was not smog, but performance. I had the strangest
problem with OBDII that is best shown in the following dyno graph:

OBDII to OBDI Comparison

The only thing that fixed this was OBDI. Go figure. So I just swap the OBDII
PCM in every two years for my smog check.

 

I just use my OBD-II for emissions. I have a OBD-I pcm that I run my bolt-on tune on.

Mike

 

OoOo ...

Now I see where you were going with the post ... Sorry lol.

And for what its worth, with the gutted cat, they actually used my dads truck to run off an emissions test for another vehicle which failed. It was totally crazy. Then again, this was on a 1988 ( I think ) F150, so it wouldnt be hard to substitute someone elses test for yours.