Rustico, I knew that was coming. What can I say 🙂
Actually, I found out the hard way – our minivan was supposed to get smog checked earlier this year and it didn’t pass. So I took it to our local dealer and they wanted to charge about $1400 to fix everything. They said I’d need: a valve replacement kit, an Intake Manifold (IMRC) kit and a tune-up. I took it back to the Precision Tune Auto Care and they did all the repairs for just under a $1000.
I had thought about just making greater than $450 in repairs and then taking the car to a Referee smog station to see if I could get the other $550 in repairs delayed for two years just to save some money. But my wife was tired of seeing the Check Engine light constantly on for the past year and a half – it never affected performance, at least not that we could tell. So I finally got that fixed. Oh yeah, we did drive around for a month or so with the number “4” on the windshield – that went over real well with my wife :)))