43 replies to this topic

[NEU]

Emissions is the easy part of the inspections (unless you have a heavily modded motor or a POS). It's the safety "crap" that's the PITA, I don't need someone to tell me anything about MY CAR, every year! And you're stuck doing that "crap" in all of Va.

There is no emissions stickers, it's just safety, emissions are all in the computer systems. The OP can take the car to another station and try to get it passed, but again, I don't think they'll pass it either with a CEL...

[Deimos]

Look at your windshield next time you're in your NoVA registered car... there's probably a little locality sticker to the side of the state inspection sticker. Can't get one of those, in those localities, without the emissions. Or renew your registration.

I don't consider the safety items to be 'crap' since I believe that people should only drive cars safely equipped and the standards are rather low. If someone can't pass the VA safety inspection, they shouldn't be driving, period. And they don't write laws for the 1% of people who know what they're doing with their own car... they write them for the 99% that would otherwise drive it til the brakes were metal on metal and the ball joints fell off. If you can't pass emissions you're polluting a little extra, boo hoo. If you can't pass the safety, you might kill someone.

All I was saying was that you can get the state safety inspection totally independent of absolutely anything else. Stations in NoVA are notorious for trying to make these seem like bundled things to sell lots of work, and the OP certainly seemed to think that it was a state standard, rather than a local one.

[midlman]

Wow..thanks for that pic... I've been trying to get my front O2 wires back into the clip (Harness side) and the wiring diagram isn't helping. Like others...my O2 got wrapped around the steering column and torn apart. This is the first pic I've found of the O2 connector where the wire colors and orientation can be seen.

lookforjoe, on 30 November 2011 - 06:10 PM, said:

Even if the code is for the front O2, the problem may be in the connectors. There is usually an adaptor/extension harness beween the front O2 & the harness plug where it comes out of the main harness on top of the transmission. You need to unplug the harness & adaptor harness & check for green mung on the contacts - this WILL cause a misreading, whether the O2 is new or not.

Make sure you route the harness AWAY from the steering column!

EDIT: reference pic (ignore arrow, wire cutters, etc)



You can see the red clip, that has to be pulled out of the housing in order for the socket to be extracted.

push back in to secure

[Gilhuly]

rmorse, on 28 November 2011 - 06:58 PM, said:

I've never done it personally, but I've heard of people soaking the o2 sensor in gas to clean it.

Do not do this. An effective way to clean an O2 sensor is to remove it and heat it up red hot with a torch. Every two years almost on the nose my car starts showing the O2 sensor getting lazy and cutting boost back sporadically. Recently I hit mine with the torch and burned off a little crud mostly on the base of the sensor and the car has been razor sharp ever since. We'll see what kind of staying power this fix has.