Imma "Gross Polluter"

[blakef]

Went in for a smog check on the car I just bought and failed, miserably. Was hoping you guys could offer some advice on where to start and/or what to work on. I've been documenting everything on a blog I started:

http://myfiatmeepmeep.blogspot.com/

Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Blake

[SLOSpider]

I would ask how does it run? Does it start right up when cold, any hesitation when getting up to speed, any flat spots when you accelerate? Have you changed the plugs, cap, rotor wires, timing belt? I see you may have had a coolant leak. Did you check the water pump? Have you changed the oil? Also need to make sure the timing is correct. Does it have good fuel? Had it been sitting for a long time before you bought it with gas in it? Dies it idle smooth?

All the above must be in good order before trying to get smoged. The owner of a car for sale is responsible for the smog unless you bought it and it was in non op status. It doesn't matter what was said or written the current owner is always responsible per California law.

With all the above done to new or recent replacements and I still has high readings it is more than likely you will need a new cat converter.

With any used Fiat its best to start with the above basics. T belt, waterpump, hoses, tune up including timing check. You most likely have a bad vacuum advance unit on the distributor that should be replaced. Let project creep commence.

[So Cal Mark]

it would be real helpful to know what year your car is and what the emission readings were. Without knowing the facts we can just chat about LA air quality

[blakef]

It seems to be running great. Initially I had some problems with cold idle, but I could always get it started by giving it a little gas for a couple of minutes. After readjusting the screw on the rotating part of the AFM and bending the wire a little so it turns off the fuel pump when it's supposed to (see blog for explanation) all of my idle problems vanished (still not sure exactly why.) It seems to be running great and idling smooth. Starts every time, and seems to pull great. It even makes a fantastic noise that leaves me grinning above 4000 rpm or so.

There is a funny smell sometimes... smells a little hot maybe or an occasional whiff of exhaust?? I'm not sure and it's hard to say since I'm new at these things. All I know is I don't smell it on my accord . In any case, the temp gauge parks itself at 190, the fan goes on and off when it should and I checked the CTS which appears to be good.

There's a run down of the little things I've noticed on my blog, but it's not much engine related other than the smell thing, and a random one off coolant leak (75% certain it was coolant) which I don't fully understand.

Oil was changed the day I bought it and looks good on dipstick. Previous owner had receipts for full valve adjustment, and new spark plugs within the last year. I'm not sure what a cap or rotor wire is? (this is the first car I've ever tried to work on, so I'm just picking most of this up as I go.) I had read about the timing belt and it was on my list of things to replace, but I didn't think it could affect emissions so I had decided to deal with it later... I see I was wrong . This: http://www.autoricambi.us/product/BT5-2 ... e-over-10/ seems like a reasonable thing to jump for?

That reminds me, I have bumped into these two sites for parts so far http://www.allisonsautomotive.com/ and http://www.autoricambi.us . Are there any others I should know about?

I do remember reading somewhere that smog is the sellers problem, but I did kinda sorta knew I was buying an old car that would probably need some work. I have a hard time convincing myself that it would be within the bounds of good taste to go after the guy. Either way, if I work through the full tune up (which I was planning on anyways) and it turns out it needs something more I'll shoot him an email... Maybe he would take pity and split the cost of a new cat or something.

So I guess moral of the story is continue full tune up before blowing my free smog retest?? Also is this "vacuum advance unit" a common problem? I don't see much about it in the guide I'm trying to follow for all of this. I'll do a little searching on the forums for it.

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: Whoops didn't see Mark's post there. It's a 1982 FI. emissions results:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LkKfMKKIHX8/U ... 0/smog.jpg
Copied over:
...........RPM.........%CO2.... %O2...................HC(PPM)........................CO(%)........................NO(PPM)
Test......MEAS.......MEAS.....MEAS..........MAX......GP.......MEAS......MAX.....GP......MEAS........MAX......GP.......MEAS
15mph...2368........10.9......0.5............152......342......209........1.05....2.55......6.02........1191....2331......322
25mph...2464........10.4......0.4............123......274......213........0.85....2.35......6.89........1021....2131......262
"

All that info and more on my blog: http://myfiatmeepmeep.blogspot.com/ (I know it's a bit of a read =( )

I've been trying to follow this guide here: http://www.hiperformancestore.com/Ljetronic.htm but it has been slow since I really have no idea how cars work and I've been having to do hours of reading in between every 5 minutes of work I do on the car .

[SLOSpider]

The wires are connected to the spark plugs. I would pull the plugs and check to see if they are the right ones number wise and how they look. The other end of the spark plug wires you will find the distributor cap and under it the rotor. Remove cap and check for wear on the metal contacts / post under the cap and on the edge of the rotor. I would also run a bottle of Chevron techron through the tank. Get the 12oz one an dump it in a full tank with fresh gas and run till almost empty. That stuff does great things to clean your fuel injectors, valves and combustion chambers. There are a few mixture screws that can be adjusted that will affect the co hc readings on the throttle body and on the mass air flow sensor.

Being that your a novice sort a speak you can probably change the plugs, cap and rotor yourself. But in the end if you don't have a lot of tools you may want to have the car looked at with a Fiat specialty type shop that can make sure the timing is adjusted correctly and can play with the air meter settings. You would want a shop that has a gas analyzer to check their readings as they go. In the end its probably the Cat Converter but as stated the rest should be up to par first. Timing belt will not effect the smog readings unless the cam settings are not lined up. If its running good then they should be ok.

I have got a lot of cars to go from gross polluter to passing with just simple timing adjustments and air fuel settings.

The vacuum advanced is the pod below the distributor cap on the distributor body with a vacuum line attached to it. The inside rubber diaphragm's crack and leak vacuum. You can test my sucking on a piece of hose connected to it and see if it holds vacuum with your tongue. That is unless you have a pump vacuum gauge otherwise.

I suspect the coolant leak to be your water pump as they can leak then stop. Check all your hoses and clamps too.

[SLOSpider]

Mark above has a great shop that can help you out Im sure.

[So Cal Mark]

all of your failure problems are related to a fuel mixture that is too rich. You wrote that you adjusted the screw in the afm. Which screw, the external air bypass screw or internal when you adjusted the fuel pump switch?

[blakef]

It was the one under the cover with all the clockwork gizmos. I noticed there was a problem when I was checking my fuel pump, which wasn't supposed to come on with the AFM closed and the key in the halfway position... but for some reason it was. So I popped open the AFM to see if I could figure it out, and it looked like the screw that holds the rotating contact in place had slipped or something?? I had to not only move the rotating contact as close to the end of the circuit board as I could in the closed position with the adjustment screw, but also bend the metal lever above the contact out a bit so it would actually hit the fuel pump switch. Presto chango idles great and the fuel pump comes on and off like the internet said it should.

Picture post fix:



I think I fiddled a bit more so the switch is closer to closed before I closed it back up. I wish I had taken a photo before I fiddled with it, but I just blanked.

EDIT: Also wanted to note that I changed this after the smog test, not before so I don't know if it changed the emissions at all.

[So Cal Mark]

moving the assembly makes major changes in fuel mixture. The afm will need to be adjusted with a CO meter to get it right so you can pass the test

[blakef]

Thanks for the advice guys! I probably will go see about getting the mixture tuned at a shop before I use my free smog retest (after seeing how ludicrously priced CO meters are), but 99% of the reason I bought the car was to work on it myself and learn about cars so I'd like to do as much as I possibly can by myself before taking it in to a shop.

I worked on it some this weekend and appear to have fixed some things and introduced a few new problems. I replaced all of the vacuum hoses and discovered a few things in the process. There was a crack in the elbow that connects the crankcase emissions to the oil vapor filter, and the oil vapor filter was completely full of sludge. So I cleaned it out and replaced the elbow. Also either the PO or a mechanic that he used (he didn't strike me as a do it yourself kind of guy) had plugged the vacuum advance hose with a screw (???), it must have been done intentionally for some reason. I did check the diaphragm and it seems to be good (holding vacuum with my tongue) although I don't know whether or not it's actually advancing the timing as it should.

After making these changes I noticed a few things. It starts up great, in fact the idle is smoothest within the first minute or two of turning it on. It drives fine at higher RPM although it does seem to have lost some power. The funny smell I noticed before is gone (yay!). The idle now seems a little rough after the engine has warmed up (opposite of before). By rough idle I mean the idle rpm seems to wander a little, the digital tach on my timing light reveals that this variation is ~80-100rpm. I'm not sure if this is normal?

I checked the timing and it appears to be set properly at 10 degrees advance. I was a little busy this weekend so I didn't manage to get much else done (other than cleaning up some grounds... my blinker finally blinks at a normal speed!).

Another problem that is starting to concern me is the temp gauge. Every time I hit the accelerator hard it drops to 0 (even at a stand still). Then if I let it sit for a minute it wanders back up to 190. I thought maybe it was a bad connection, but after spending sometime wire wiggling near the gauge and near the temp sensor in the coolant T (that's where it's reading from right?), I'm starting to think not. Perhaps some more rigorous testing with the multimeter is in order. On the plus side the fan does seem to be going on and off with some regularity at least.

Anyways advice for next steps would be great, but my plan at the moment is to check all of the FI electronic components as best I can this week in the evenings. Next weekend I'm planning on replacing the O2 sensor and timing belt/water pump/bearing, if I have time I'd also like to check the injectors. Also, I could probably use a new AFM gasket but I can't find it on any of the parts websites I've found, does anyone know where I can find this?

Thanks again for all of your help, I can't even begin to describe what a resource this forum has been to someone new with cars!

[So Cal Mark]

if you have a voltmeter, you can set the fuel mixture without a CO meter. Connect the positive lead to the O2 sensor lead and set the fuel mixture so the O2 sensor is reading close to .450, or switching back and forth on both sides of .450. Make sure the intake system doesn't have any air leaks or vacuum leaks. The wandering idle could be caused from an air leak around the air bypass screw in the throttle body.
Plugging the vacuum advance will help reduce Nox for the smog test, that's if the vacuum advance was actually working.

[blakef]

So I've discovered a few more problems and fixed a few more things as well.
Work Done:
I replaced the O2 sensor and put in new plugs... (the owner had told me they were recently replaced and I even have his bill from the mechanic that says so, but he apparently got scammed as there were 4 different plugs all black and all clearly replaced at separate times.)

I checked all of the sensors I could figure out how to check with my multimeter and discovered that the TPS was improperly set. This removed the light puffing backfires that had been happening after I took my foot off the pedal and to be honest, I'm a little sad I thought they were charming. EDIT: Also wanted to add that fuel pressure was checked and seemed good and engine compression was 120 psi on the dot in all 4 cylinders.

Problems:
I tried for a long time to set the mixture but I just couldn't get it to cooperate. I tried both using the voltmeter on the O2 sensor and the gunson colortune (I know this is for carb cars usually, but they say it works for FI and I wanted to look inside my engine while it was running ). The voltmeter jumped around a lot even after getting the sensor hot (it was jumping around between .2 and .8 or so which is on the right order of magnitude anyway). While looking through the colortune I noticed that the color was very variable between half blue half orange and bright orange and I think that the engine is missing occasionally which is probably the cause of the variable idle speed I mentioned previously. The idle mixture adjustment on the AFM seemed to have little to no effect on my visual from the colortune or my reading from the voltmeter. It was doing so little that I removed the screw entirely for a moment and still couldn't tell the difference. So I gave up on that for the weekend and moved on to other things.

While messing around with the O2 sensor I noticed a very small exhaust leak on the manifold that appears to be coming from a hairline crack, I can only tell it's leaking when the engine is cold. From what I've read I doubt this is the source of my super rich running or funky idle... but maybe it's a good excuse to move to aftermarket headers sooner rather than later... I'll have to start saving up.

Now since it seems through the colortune that the engine is getting an inconsistant amount of fuel especially at idle I assumed that it had to be an airleak or clogged injectors or something. So after watching some youtube videos I decided to go over the whole car with my propane torch (unlit of course ) and I really couldn't find anything. I was wondering though if maybe it was an airleak in the crankcase that I couldn't get at, so I tried removing the crankcase vent hose and plugging the hole on the throttle body. Running seemed to improve slightly, but still not perfect.

Anyways long story short, I ended up blowing gently into the crankcase hose to see if it could hold some pressure to indicate it might be well sealed. I immediately heard a gurgling sound and discovered oil pouring out from under my distributor cap. This means my distributor oil seal is gone right? Could this be the source of all my problems? I didn't realize the crankcase is directly connected to the distributor could this indicate even worse problems? Some sort of internal engine leak or something?

I guess it's time for a distributor rebuild. Is it okay to attempt to reuse the vacuum advance (this does appear to be working based on my very scientific watch the timing while I suck on it testing method.) What about the pickup? Everything else is pretty cheap and I'll just replace.

I'm gonna go ahead and do a coolant flush and replace the timing belt this weekend while I wait for those parts to come in for next weekend.

Thanks again for all of the advice, it has been invaluable! Mark especially!

[So Cal Mark]

the O2 sensor readings should switch back and forth if it's working correctly. .450 is the threshold, so voltages should constantly switch back and forth over that point. Popping in the exhaust is common with a rich mixture that was indicated on your smog test report. Excess fuel is burning in the exhaust on decel

[wizard124]

Another problem that is starting to concern me is the temp gauge. Every time I hit the accelerator hard it drops to 0 (even at a stand still). Then if I let it sit for a minute it wanders back up to 190. I thought maybe it was a bad connection, but after spending sometime wire wiggling near the gauge and near the temp sensor in the coolant T (that's where it's reading from right?), I'm starting to think not. Perhaps some more rigorous testing with the multimeter is in order. On the plus side the fan does seem to be going on and off with some regularity at least.

The temp gauge sensor is on the top of the head at the end of a green/white wire. That ground is part of the G3 cluster (under dash panel, above ignition switch).
The sensor on the "T" provides input to the ECU.

When you say it drops to 0 Is it like you turned the key OFF? Do other gauges act funny also? My manual says the temp gauge is powered by a yellow/black wire (common to the Tach and Fuel gauges also). This feeds from the Fuse "A". I would look for a loose connection, clean the fuse contacts, and inspect the sensor wire for breaks/bad insulation. I just replaced the green/white wire on my car because of its poor condition. Go here: http://ww.fiatspider.com/f08/viewtopic. ... 7&start=90

[wizard124]

I had to google Colortune to find out what your are talking about. I found the Gunson website and watched their video. Ingenious

Did this help you adjust your air/fuel mixture? Did you make adjustments using the air bypass screw or with the contacts within the AFM. Tell us what you did and do you recommend the Colortune