[quote=Hobie]Flu: White smoke is from a coolant. Head gasket failure most common, followed by crack in head. Feel like a running a compression or leak down test??
Black is oil or super rich. Rich would be running really badly and you would have mentioned that already so that’s not it.
New catalytic is like the magic pill for older cars! I got a carboratoer in one of mine that runs great but it just is not as clean as fuel injected. I have a running bet with my smog guy!
If you are planning on keeping it, replace vaccuum lines and vacuum control ( CTO )valves. These are the vaccum switches that cycle depending on coolant temp.
But all of that is after having a different smog smog guy – pass or don’t pay place.
Oh, and maybe it would be good to make a couple of high speed freeway runs to burn off stuff in the pipe and really heat up the cat. Then take in for the test while cat is hot.
Doesn’t the car have to be dyno smogged? Newer cars get the plug in test.[/quote]
Actually, starting last year I think, cars 2000 and newer just do the OBDII scan test. They don’t actually need to be dynoed. Which is weird. I always passed the dyno test. I didn’t notice the smoke at all before. My car unfortunately is MY2000 so it does the new test. which should have been easier…
I think what did it is I probably have a tiny leak somewhere, that normally wouldn’t have caused it if I were driving that car daily. But I’ve left this car parked for almost 1 and 1/2months, and I didn’t bother to drive it on an extended drive before taking it to the smog place. I just tried it just now. I see the normal white exhaust you would get on a cold start, but after warmup, I don’t see that huge smoke that apparently the smog place saw.
It’s funny that my miata with a supercharger and borderline legal exhaust passed with no problem. I was more worried about that one failing, because that thing is probably more pollutant than my audi. I did change the cat on the Miata since it was only $200 and easy to access.
But I agree. I’m not going back to any smog place on Miramar. None of the smog places offer a free retest, unlike Poway Smog and other places off of Poway.
