Hi Guys, first post here, I tried to read all the emissions threads, and could not solve my problems.

Car: 1993 Plymouth Laser AWD with JDM motor with 200km on it
Compression is 150 psi right accross the board.
New Cat converter
new O2 Sensor
new plugs (NGK stock type)
new wires
New coolant temp sender
new waterpump and alternator (although that doesnt have much to do with emissions)

Failed emissions 4 times, Right now I am at 638 ppm HC, at idle and the limit is 200, Idle is fast around 1100 rpm.

ISC checks out ok, TPS checks out ok, Idle switch checks out ok,

Car doesnt sound quite right at idle, its not quite a miss but its not smooth. I can smell Unburnt HC at the tailpipe.

Please help if you have any thoughts it would be much appreciated.

Do you have any fuel/airflow related mods?

You may also want to read through this thread:

http://www.ca.dsm.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=254639&fpart=1

Thanks, I read that thread, My car should be stock, no mods other than removing the intake silencer and intake horn.

I should add, new air filter as well and oil is less than 300km on it.

No error codes, no CEL.

Car runs well just not at idle.

What are your fuel trims at? Any exhaust leaks (even TINY ones) before/around the 02 sensor?

Edit: have you verified that your base timing is at 5*?

Check these three things

-Timing has to be 5 degrees at idle
-NO BOOST LEAKS
-No exhaust leaks

Reset the battery and take the car for a good spin 20 min hard driving and make sure the cat is hot before you do the test.

Do you still have the stock emissions equipment installed? or was it removed during the engine swap

No Boost Leaks, (sorry should have mentioned that).
No apparent Exhaust leaks (although why would that cause the HC failure)
Timing is at 5deg.

do a good decarbonization, both using MCCC and letting it soak overnite and then suck some windshield washer fluid thru a vacuum hose slowly and carefully with some rpms on. Suck in about a liter or maybe more.

With lots of carbon on your pistons or head parts, fuel will soak into it and then evaporate out and be unburned. Quite common, not just for DSM's either but any car with miles on it and/or had sat for a while(JDM engine)

Also double check your cam timing. Simple check on that is to pull the upper cover and then put the car in 2nd gear, ebrake off, and roll the car till the "T" mark on the lower timing cover is aligned with the notch on the crank pulley. When this lines up, check for alignment on the cams. If even one cam is out one tooth, its 12 degrees.

I did decarbonize it, however hopefully I have found the problems, The exhaust manifold was cracked, Its been replaced and hopefully it will pass today. wish me luck.

Failed Again, High HC at idle, no exhaust leaks, Car is not running well at idle, feels like it has a miss. Any suggestions?

If it's not idling well, and you've changed the plugs/wires already, maybe the coil is on its way out.

I'd double-check for intake leaks, especially at/around the throttle body, as these will have a big effect on your idle.

As a side note: Exhaust leaks can raise HC because when the leak is near the O2 sensor it may read more lean than actual, thus prompting the ECU to add fuel, resulting in a rich mixture.

That being said, it's important that you reset your ECU after correcting these problems. It will take some time for the ECU to learn that you've fixed something, and take away that extra fuel.
Pull the MPI fuse from the fusible link on the +ve battery terminal, for a minute, and your ECU is reset.

What do you mean by car is not running well at idle?

As in it's idle surging?

Or fluttering around?

Please explain, will make it easier to diagnose.

Fluttering, It smells really rich at idle from the exhaust, when i pull the plugs to "read" them they seem normal.

my mechanics cleaned the throttlebody and egr valve. if you hold the car at 2500 rpm like the emissions test does then once every 5-10 seconds the car will make a noise like a miss, at idle it occurs more often.

Compression is 150psi accross the board.

Idle hunts up and down, but only by a 100 rpm or so,

I changed the coil, to a backup one that i had, no differnce in idle, I do reset the ecu, and it is not throwing any codes.

Mine also failed the HC at idle and was running rough and rich. Nothing seemed to fix it until I swapped out the injectors. You seemed to have tried everything else.

If it leads to desperation, why no make a small vacuum leak so that you lean it out for the test since it's only an 2 speed idle test and no load.

Also, if you've replaced all those parts, isn't that enough to get the $400 one year thing?

The at or above $450 limit may only qualify if done at an accreditted facility, by an accreditted technician but I'd have to brush up in that regard to be sure.

If the idle is at ~1000 RPM and is hunting 100 RPM or more consistently, then you have to perform all the basics to set timing, Idle Stop Switch, TPS, Boost leaks, and yes you could have a leaking injector which could be found somewhat by turning off the injectors with a logger but makes it more complicated if you aren't on the rollers. Without a consistent idle, elevated RPM and obviously bad tailpipe emissions are some issues that you can have.

Your high idle is what worries me the most because you can't set the timing very accurately for "base" timing when the engine is racing above the proper level. Heck the car could even have the throttle plate partly opened to the point of exposing the vacuum ports slightly, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Have you take a vacuum tester to apply vacuum directly to the EGR valve? Normally this only happens under load, but you can also use your hand (watch out as it can get hot in that area) to depress the EGR valve if memory serves me well enough (2-3 years ago I did this), and that will allow you to flood the motor with EGR to prove that your motor should almost stall out at idle when doing this. You can also hold the RPM higher and perform the same test at ~2500 just to see what the motor should sound like when EGR is applied. The motor will usually need to be pretty hot for the EGR to be kicking in, so don't burn yourself to do this. This can be done with the motor cold for the sake of knowing that the EGR has some dramatic effect at idle.

What sort of vacuum readings do you have too?

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead..I just thought I would update it as I am the new owner the car and found out what the problem was. The timing belt was changed as mentioned by the previous owner, however the shop did not line the cams up properly. The exhaust cam was retarded a tooth which is apparently a common error. I have re-timed the car at this point so hopefully that will solve the problem. I will be firing it up this Sunday and then proceeding to have an emissions test done this coming week.

I went for my E-test today and didnt do any of the standard prep work for it. No oil change, plugs or wires. And I failed quite bad.

2500rpm
Limit Reading Result
HC 200 107 Pass
CO 1.0 1.33 Fail
NO N/A

Idle
Limit Reading Result
HC 200 208 Fail
CO 1.0 2.53 Fail
NO N/A

Now I will go change my plugs, my wires are still in good condition. I am running stock injectors and fuel system with a DSMlink.

I have been thru just about every thread there is on e-test and all the of them almost conflict each other.

Any pointers? Looks like I am running way rich at idle. Also does running 84 octane gas help or hurt? Currently I am running Ultra94 only

Go for a highway pull before the test, and use crap gas.

We just bought a 93 Benz 300E recently, and the first e-test I took it in for it failed. HC: limit 54, reading around 150. NO: limit around 200, reading was in the 700's !

I swear, I put nothing else but a gallon of methanol in the tank, went for a retest the next day and passed.
HC: limit 54, reading 54
NO: limit around 200's, reading was in the 100's

This was this past weekend. I'll post up the failed and passed e-test when I get a chance.

it wouldn't hurt lean the car out a bit or even slightly advance the ignition timing by a degree since you don't have to put the car on the rollers.

Have you checked your fuel trims in DSMlink ?
Start with the free stuff first.

Did you go for a good run right before the test? Something as simple as not having the CAT hot enough will make you fail (as they don't do anything unless their hot enough). Then start with the other simple things mentioned. Have also heard that if the car is idled a long time before the test, the evap system could be purging into the intake, which will also make your readings higher then normal.

Sorry to hijack the thread guys, but why do you say to use crap gas Rob? Is there something in the higher end gas such as Sunoco 94 that can cause the car to fail?

The lower octane fuel burns faster, so it's more likely to pass an emissions test as there's less chance of residual.

Well I just played around with the link a bit, it sounds better at idle but I am still 100% sure what I doing, I will be staying out of boost for now.
My fuel trims are strange
LTFT (Lo) 12.5
LTFT (Med) 12.5
STFT 16.8

Those numbers didnt change at all when I moved the Global setting -5, -10 and -15 didnt make them change at all. It did sound like it was idling better and no knock was showing.

Timming I left alone at idle its around +3-5 but at around 2500rpm it shows +20-30 advance. That doesnt look right to me

for your ltft's and such, what was your coolant temp, if it's too cold, the car assumes its still warming up, and trhe ecu wont learn. There's a a whole method to get it to change the fuel trims

Your ecu is maxed out, it thinks you are running lean so it's adding 12.5% more fuel into the mixture but if the stft is almost 17% then it's trying to add even more. Yout tune is completely wrong.

What injectors are you running? and what are the global and deadtime settings.

I am running stock injectors, the global is currently set at -15% and 0 dead time.

The car was up to operating temperature, I gotta wait for traffic to clear up so i can get some steady speed driving in.

I know the car has been running rich, the black soot on my bumper can atest to that.

That's why you are running lean.

Zero out everything. You only use global to compensate for larger injectors. You don't have larger injectors, you have stock injectors.

After dinner I will zero everything back out and see what happens. Everything was left at stock settings when I first did the etest.

I'll report back later

Well I zeroed everything out and things started to move a bit but all the trims are still to high. I bumped the 50hz up a bit and the stft went to near zero, the ltft are still high, but I ran out of time, I will log it again on the way to work tommorrow.

you have 450cc injectors---

DO NOT TOUCH Global or deadtime settings. For stock 450cc you should have global at 0% and 0 deadtime.

If your airflow is positive in idle 50hz increase the airflow the same amount.

So if your low trim is 10% increase 50hz by 10%,

Log MafRaw and rev the car under 50hz then 150hz and then 250hz and adjust the airflow settings accordingly.

to pass the etest you should increase you base timing from 5 deg to 6-6.5deg to lean out your mixture more.

Ok, so I thought my car was good, but when I took it for a E-test I found that it wasn't as good as I thought. I had a big jug(4liters of methol hydrate) and $25 of 94 octane and here are the readings

ASM 2525
Limit Reading
HC ppm- 58 -21
CO%- .32 -.02
NO ppm- 652 -1869

CURB IDLE
Limit Reading
HC ppm- 200 -2064
CO%- 1.00 -0.00
NO ppm- N/A -N/A

The car is a 91 fwd tsi, I think I need to change the cat, which I have, but need to know what else might be causing these numbers. My reading of HC ppm at idle is extremly high, does our stock fpr stay open at idle and closed while under load to keep pressure in the rail? If so could the FPR be to blame aswell? My plug wires could use changing, so I guess I will do them and the cat forsure, but my temp permit ends on Sunday so have to get this done asap.
Any and all help would be great thank in advance Brendan.

Why didn't you just do a test with 89 octane gas? If it doesn't pass that, then try other things... Or is there something making you think you'll fail with regular gas?

Check the fuel form here, there's a big guide to emissions diagnostics.

While it's never going to cause this kind of gross pollution, use regular gas. Higher octane gas can hurt emmisions.

Log your o2, your probably going to find it either dead, or reporting full rich at idle. If it's not dead, start looking at the fuel injection system, MAF readings, etc. Something's giving cause to pump fuel in. Or failing that, it's not burning.

High NOX is often an EGR valve getting stuck, failed or a cat on the way out.

A busted FPR could certainly be increasing fuel pressure far outside what the ECU can account for, but you'd probably have other serious driveability issues as well as that.

If your o2 test's good, and maf readings are within reason, I might do a quick fuel pressure check, but it's likely your going to find your trouble before getting to it.

Plugs and wires can't hurt, but would need to be way into miss-fire at idle territory to cause this kind of trouble. And lastly, the cat is often not to blame, but running very rich for a long time can really take it's toll and plug them up with carbon rendering them pretty in-effective.

Paul

Ya my car use to blow all kinds of black smoke when boosting, then my turbo went and oil started to go through my exhaust and cat. I have recently put the maf-t in and the black smoke is all gone, aswell I changed the turbo.

Ok, I have found some of my parts, which include a new 2.5 inch cat, newer egr, I am going to use a can of t/b cleaner to be sure of no carbon build up. I will do a boost leak test and seal all leaks.
Does anyone in or around oshawa have a copy or can make me a copy of tmo logging program I have a copy, but the computer its on is in peices.
Is there any thing else I should do as a precaution? Also if I have exhaust leaks would that make me fail?
If it would does anyone know where I can get the turbo to manifold gasket, turbo to o2 gasket, and o2 to downpipe? I know one of them is leaking and the others probablly arn't far behind. I know I can go to Mitsu, I just remember looking for them before and didn't have much luck so I HAD to go to Mitsu (I hate waiting lol). If they are my only option does anyone know the part numbers?
Could I just buy a can of copper spray gasket to temp seal the leaks? If so where can I get some?(they don't sell it where I use to get it)

Also I noticed that my idle on the test was at 438rpm? I read in the e-test guide in the fuel fourm that a low idle can cause a incomplete burn. So could that alone be why I have such high HC on my crub idle?