And what? move to Arkansas!

 

Hey, Rudy
Hope you get everything resolved man. I had no problem when I had it tested here in WA. Sorry to hear that. Let me know how it goes.

Mike

 

Problem solved. The culprit turned out to be the one thing that I suspected the least - the Softronic flash.

Here is what transpired:

Endured through morning traffic on the 91 Fwy and headed to Vision Motorsports located in Laguna Hills.

Actually came on a bad day as Dwain and crew had a slew of race cars to prep for a race tomorrow. Dwain still managed to fit me in though, very accommodating of him.

The mechanic started with removing my Tubi and putting on a low mileage stock 996 Turbo exhaust they had on hand. The smog machine indicated that while the HC lowered a bit, the CO% that caused me to fail the test was still way over the limit.

I was a bit stumped as I don't think I have bad O2 sensors, MAF, etc, that would cause such a rich condition at idle.

Dwain and crew were very detailed oriented and they still went through every possible culprit. During this time, Dwain took time out of his busy schedule to give me a tour of the facility.

I was like a kid at candy store. 997 GT3 Cup Car, a 4.0 liter flat 6 engine being built, a Boxster with a 996 Turbo engine and GT2 transmission, etc. Back to my issue...

The mechanic checked everything and everything that would cause the car to run so rich at idle were given a clean bill of health.

Finally, I suggested, could it be the Softronic flash? It didn't make sense. The flash should tell the car to dump more fuel when the car is under load and seeing boost, not when it is idling in neutral. However, since I couldn't think of anything else, I gave Dwain consent to go ahead and revert the car back to stock program.

Vision didn't have wireless connection at the service area, so I couldn't flash the car back with my laptop. Fortunately, Vision has a PWiz so they were still able to return the car back to stock program.

The result? Even without the cat properly warmed up, the CO% went from 2 something down to 0.8 (passing!). The mechanic warmed up the cat and put the probe back in. I couldn't believe my eyes, CO% dropped to 0.06!

The car feels slow on stock program but at least I can pass the smog test now. Not sure what's up with the tuned program. Are they supposed to tell the ECU to add so much fuel when idling?

Oh, at the end, Dwain gave me the stock exhaust free of charge. Also scored a free Vision t-shirt. Top guy and my experience with Vision couldn't have been better. Two thumbs up from me.

 

Glad everything workout fine at the end.

Mike

 

i guess most of the people that has a flash and aftermarket exhaust will have trouble passing CA smog

 

am happy i have property in a county that only makes you smog your car when you sell it. hell half the cars up here in the woods
1. never see the real road
2. drive to the post office and grocery story maybe two miles a week
it's not a bad law as we never drive or cars anyway i mean the longest trip would to be to the smog station ......love ca hate the goverment

 

NO, no I don't want more people here. I lived in Communistfoina for about 10 years from 89 to 97, screw that!
North West Ar only has the largest retailer in the world home office - Wal Mart The largest meat producer - Tyson. The largest public traded transportation company - JBHunt. A great D-1 Univ - U of AR. You can keep your bankrupt, tree hugger, communist country.

 

Not really, I worried about passing mine but passed it easily about 2 weeks ago. My cat is 200 cells.

btw, I was worrying about the visual inspection too...

 

Well what ever melts your butter! I enjoy the outdoors and Cali is tough to beat for that - the weather, the beaches, the skiing, Lake Tahoe, Yoesemite etc. I think I like those better than Wal Mart and meat.

 

Just smogged mine today with a used Miltek Sport system I purchased on eBay several months back. Took advice and ran the car fo ~30mins, and it passed with flying colors. Thought I was going to have to install my stock exhaust with TJW mod that might have failed the visual.

Good luck-

 

Absolutely Smog Tech did not know what he was doing. Lucky you.

 

Now that **** is funny!!!!

 

No kidding, my 964 cab almost didn't pass because I have a K&N cone filter. I need to find a new smog shop!

 

I actually been there with another car and the tech was a young cool dude. I took my chance with him and he did mention to another tech like "with after market intake", but didn't say anything else. Surprisingly, the guy did the 2500+ rpm for 30 second much better than me.

 

I talked to a smog tech that I know and he got me worried. Apparently recently here in Santa Barbara County, the emissions enforcement folks have been hitting a lot of the local smog shops with a bait car that has various things changed with the emissions equipment. They busted a bunch of the shops for not performing adequate visual inspections.

So as I'm looking for a 996TT to buy, I hope the owner has held on to some of the stock parts if the car is modified so that I can swap them out when it is time to do a smog check.