I`m in a terrible situation and frantically need some help in addressing it.

To preface: Here in the province of Ontario all cars must pass what we call the e-test to meet a certain emissions standard or they cannot be licensed. At this writing I am six days away from owning a car I will not be able to drive, or sell, or even take to the track unless I get a tow bar or a flatbed.

Just bought a swear-to-god showroom `92 Civic hatch with a JDM B16A 2nd generation engine. Seller said he had been planning on turning it into a track car and was running it with a test pipe. Swore all it needed was to have the test pipe replaced with a catalytic converter and it would pass. He was wrong. Perhaps not intentionally, but dead wrong. After putting in the cat my guy ran the test and said ``not even close``. There are more lenient requirements for cars which qualify as ``hot rods``, which mine does, but he says it wouldn`t even pass those.

Seems my seller had gone a lot further down the no-longer-streetable road than he said--or knew. No matter--my problem now. If we have to have a conversation about it we will, but right now it`s not my top priority--getting the car to pass is.

Seems part of the issue might be the cams he put in--Buddy Club Spec IIIs with adjustable gears. Car also has an ITR intake manifold and 64mm throttle body, AEM adjustable fuel pressure regulator and Walbro 255 fuel pump.

I`ve got friends telling me I can pass the test if I retard the ignition timing all the way and also maybe retard the cams. The distributor I think I can deal with but I have no idea what to do with the cams. Can anyone advise me on how to do this, and also whether it might work? I don`t care if it runs like crap as long as I can pass the test--afterwards I can put it back the way it was and not have to worry about the e-test again for another 2 years.

Really need some help here, people. It is now Thursday. I have a temporary permit which runs out next Wednesday. If I can`t get the car to pass an e-test by then I`m screwed.

 

just put the stock cams back in it and if its tuned get a stock map back in it

 

Did you install a new cat or used?

I'm using the same cams and recently went through emissions. The first time it failed miserably like yours. For the second attempt the operator let me sit in the car with him and I made adjustments with my Neptune rtp while watching the numbers. In the end I got CO and NOx down to half the limit by leaning it out to 18+ afrs and taking away a little timing. I could not budge the HC numbers however. They stayed at twice the limit no matter what I did. The operator informed me that's a sign that the cat is not doing its job. Its a few years old and is a highflow 200cell job. On my old car I used to keep a brand new stock replacement cat that I only ever used on emissions days. Never failed.

I ended up getting an exemption sticker this but it was an interesting experiment.

 

get a set of b16 cams, a p30 IM and a p30/p28 ecu with an p30 basemap on it and you will pass. don't retard the timing too much because you will heat up your cat to a point where you will not pass emissions

 

Post the results from your initial test

 

Are they using a four gas analyzer or are they using an actual chassis dyno also?

 

Interesting. Some friends in Ontario pass just fine in their R32 Skylines, with larger injectors, turbochargers, and the like. I think you need a TUNING solution and not some chipped ECU that runs you just too rich. As stated, one used Neptune to pass with a catalytic converter. I don't see any reason why you couldn't do the same. OR, as mentioned, just put it back to stock

My friend's R32 As evidence when he drove it into the shop bay with current registration

 

OK so this is really embarrassing. I must look like a real dick. All frantic and stuff in my post, and all you people respond--and squat-all else from me. I am so so sorry.

Here's the thing: any other forum I've ever joined sends me an e-mail alert when somebody posts to a thread I'm involved in. For whatever reason (probably something I did/didn't do right), no such alerts have come and I just assumed nobody was responding and I was on my own. Yeah, of course I should have checked the actual thread itself--but quite honestly every waking moment of every day has been spent on trying to resolve this issue. Between calling and e-mailing friends, tuners and anybody I could think of it just didn't occur to me. My bad. My terrible.

I'll post again later to respond to all questions and suggestions as best I can. Suffice to say for now that the day has come and gone and the car is now a sculpture despite the involvement of 3 e-test facilities, 5 different mechanics, the two top tuning shops in Toronto, and the expenditure of just over one thousand dollars. Not sure if I'm allowed to swear on this site, but if I was, this is what I would say: M*therf*cker all to Hell.

In the meantime I just wanted to get something up as soon as possible and maybe try to salvage any credibility I may have had on this forum. Once again to all who posted in response, please accept my apologies.

 

Sorry to hear that car isn't going anywhere. Someone asked this before...is your cat a new OEM cat? If not, you should consider getting one. A cam swap (even if you can't do it yourself) is fairly easy and shouldn't be more than 2 hours labor...well worth doing, just to get the car to pass. Then swap your old cams back in.

fm

 

I think a key thing is to find out what is being used as engine management.

First and foremost !, ( if its a ebay chip or somethign along those lines, even 2 oem cats lined up wont make you pass ).

You said you went to 5 tuning shops in toronto ? , wich ones did you go to ? and what did they tell you ?

If you are really lost, Try TEKNOTIK in toronto. Tell them you need to get a tune for etests.

They'll pull your timming and give it a descent tune so you are not running silly rich .

( and they can evaluate the catalytic converter, as there is many cheap ones out there that do an okey job on totolly stock cars, but fail horribly on anything moded ).

 

oh and just heads up I went through the same thing, ( had a old chipped ecu , went for etest and failed horribly, put back stock p30, and passed great )

 

If it comes down to it and your desperate enough to "cheat" 3 bottles of heet methanol based octane booster mixed with ONLY 2 gallons of unleaded will pretty much blow zeros.