E vs. Emissions

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Alchohol is great!

Here is my catless Evo on E85.

Max #s
======
Idle:
-HC 100
-CO 1%

2.5K:
-HC 130
-CO 1%

Evo VIII Catless (Fail)
===========
Idle:
-HC 148
-CO 0.65
-CO2 13.6

2.5K:
-HC 90
-CO 0.6
-CO2 14.0

Mod List:
Evo VIII
Tanabe DP
Tanabe TP
Modified noir cat back
GM boost solenoid
Walboro FP
RC 1000cc injectors
GST Tuned

Just needed a touchup at idle to pass.
 
I just want to point out that a lot of the ethanol tree hugger bull shit in E's article is fucking propaganda. Ethanol's safer for the environment blah blah blah. Helps farmers and food supplies...uh huh

Wanna know why there are no CRXs that make 50MPG like they did in the 90s? Yeah. The whole hybrid craze is falling on the back of ethanol and it just pisses me off.

Ever notice how much the price of an ear of corn has gone up at the grocery store in the last 5 years? Wanna take a guess at why? Might be there are more farmers growing corn for the ethanol subsudy, so to make up for not selling it to a refinery you get fucked. You also get fucked due to the other shit said farmers could grow, but dont, since it's not as profitable. Less competition = higher prices. Fucking Iowa. This whole E85 bullshit would have gone away if Iowa wasnt the first state for presidential primaries. Fucking pandering by both parties in that state is what caused the 10% in all gas. Not to reduce emissions (if we wanted to do that, we would have ratified kyoto).

[/rant]

E's experience at the sniffer though is 100% valid though, so :thumbsup: for that.

:concur: on the rant... i generally feel the same way
this was strictly a way of making it through emissions cheap and easy


Just sent post this to the New Britain DMV

its not illegal to run alcohol in your car
its not illegal to run any fuel additives in your car
there are no standards or laws about what kind of concentrations of fuel additives you can run
the DMV got their money, so why the hell would they care anyway
and even if it was illegal and they did care, i still dont
i really couldnt care less...
and they would likely be more interested in how i used $7.50 worth of parts from napa to make my OBD-2 car fool the secondary O2 sensor into thinking that my cat was functioning properly :shrug2:


did you come across anything about toluene in your research?
no... at least nothing that hasnt already made its way around the internet too many damn times...
but my findings from alcohol lead me to believe that the few ounces they were talking about diluting in to a tank of gas wouldnt do much of anything...
but i wasnt really looking for toluene info... so i dunno

pics of said del sol? i knew you had one, just never seen it.

theres a few around... i dont really take pics of it and im not big on posting them on a board... i think there might be a shot or two in claytons meet thread

insert pictures from kissing said guardrail :)

:( :fuckyou3:
i did go back up there a few years back on my way through VT and sign the guardrail where i hit it though :lmao:
 
Glad I don't have to worry about this shit. I've had a CEL for 2 years on and off because of the goddamn front o2 sensor. I'd fail miserably most likely, but once again thank god Indiana doesn't worry about it... yet anyway.
 
i would say you're wasting so much money on gas driving with a CEL, it would be cheaper just to change it, but i know you never drive the car anyway
 
LOL E i remember you said that. if only those pictures and videos were still available :( damn you hardware failure!
 
i would say you're wasting so much money on gas driving with a CEL, it would be cheaper just to change it, but i know you never drive the car anyway

Meh, it still gets 28-30 mpg city. I've changed the damn O2 twice already, I think its because the header has a deeper screw inset than the stock manifold had, so it's not reading correctly. Besides, I've put 15 bucks in gas in it at 3.05/gal in the past two months. Not too worried about it.
 
no sniffer in upstate
just OBD2 pass/fail

NYC has used a sniffer for quite a number of years now, but luckily no one gives a shit about upstate
 
I like it. I used the Acetone trick to get the old D16A6 past emissions last year in June 2010. I knew it was on it's last leg and was right. Finally got it to pass with a new OEM type cat (other one was burned totally out) and some cam timing tweaking as well as Injector cleaner and a quantity of Acetone in the fuel tank before the run on the emissions dyno.

Put a fully rebuilt DOHC ZC in it, just got it running and on the road July 4 this year.

I've ran methanol alcohol in many applications over the years including as a cutter to nitromethane in model engines and our old Briggs and Stratton powered mini-bikes many years ago.

You guys basically answered the only question I would have - how much alcohol will the ECU/Fuel delivery system tolerate to not be so lean it won't run? I know you could run straight methanol in one for a day or tankful and not hurt hardware at all. And it runs great - love the smell.

When I get to emissions this year, if I have issues, there is a 5 gallon can of methanol alcohol in the closet along with race gas and a couple of gallons of nitromethane. Have racing karts and also run RC cars, planes and boats hence the nitro.

Any idea on the actual ethanol to gasoline ration the ECU/Fuel system will tolerate and still run? That's the question - how much alcohol will the car run on? I would be surprised if it would run rich enough to tolerate 50/50 alcohol/gasoline blend.

What you have effectively done is lean down the engine with the addition of a cleaner burning fuel - good idea.

EDIT: Ok, I looked the first post over and found the bottom line. About 25% if it's setup rich to begin with and upwards of 50% it's a matter of easing into it with repeaded tests. Thanks - good info!
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
QUOTED FROM OP's FIRST POST

i guess i should say, Denatured Alcohol does not fix any of the actual reasons your car is failing emissions... and whether it will help you depends on why you are failing... and you should still look into getting your car running properly and clean to protect the environment, and for the children dammit!!!

but if you are failing because you are running rich, i can comfortably say
yes.gif
Denatured Alcohol can safely be used to get your car though the sniffer test for emissions

how much you need to use depends on a few things:
how badly you are failing... the worse your numbers are the more alcohol you will need to run
how rich your car is running, and how high a percentage of alcohol are you going to try to run... alcohol needs to run a lot richer than gasoline in order to run well... running too high an alcohol mix can cause a lean misfire if you are not running enough fuel
whether or not your car is running ok or not (ie: if your car is just a piece of shit and barely runs i dont think alcohol will fix you)


all of the pages i found with people talking about tossing 1/2 a qt or a full qt into 10 gallons and passing, they must not have been failing by much at all... they probably could have passed by just driving around and heating up their cat (if they would have failed at all)

the 1-2 qts to 1-3 gallons will probably get most normal decent running unmodified cars through

if you are running pig ass rich though, you are going to need to run a LOT of alcohol...
my recommendation... run your car almost empty and pour in a gallon of denatured alcohol, then drive that off till its almost empty and pour in another gallon...
that should have you on just about straight alcohol... drive around for about 15 minutes and go to the testing station... if you dont pass with that, im not sure you can be helped (if your state has limits for how low your numbers can be you cant run straight alcohol... it burns wayyyy to clean... you will have to find your own mix ratios)

as always:
****TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK****
neither hondaswap, its owners, any of its staff or myself are responsible for your actions or the consequences of your actions...
if you are going to dump industrial solvents into your fuel tank you are doing so on your own
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
EDIT #2:
Read through neonmike's #2 post. Excellent! I like the way you think - 100% ethanol. We could get into some grand trouble together! Getting mine ready for the emissions and state inspection next weekend.

I'll drive it in for the test low on fuel - any issues, drive it home and pour the mother load to it.
 
Last edited:
Will do - I'm hoping I don't have to delve into my bag of tricks and the sucker will pass first time. Have a brand new cat for it - used only once for last year's check.

DOHC ZC motor has 100 miles on it now. Stock with the exception the compression was bumped up to 10:1. Stock cams, and P29 map in the P06 ECU.

Motor probably has enough miles on it to run, should have ~200 by next weekend. No smoke, oil level not moving. No leaks anywhere. Just working on the idle - haven't got to it yet. Checking fuel pressure today (hopefully) - my gauge only goes to 10 psi so, I"m looking for something with a higher range.

I'll post the emissions dyno results.
 
go for a half hour ride before going to nmake sure the cat is super hot and 'catting' :)
 
Explain this to me.

Say you have a car that wont pass the sniffer test. Say its a 94 honda civic.

The car comes stock with 1 cat. What if i went to a muffler shop and got an exhaust with 3 cats? Wouldnt it pass then?

Im sure it would run like total bs, but i could just swap the exhaust out when I got home.
 
What if the reason it is failing is because you have a dirty motor like an SR20? I was thinking about doing something like this for my last car.
 
if you are failing because its just a dirty motor, then pass it with alcohol and call it a day...

no sense spending several hundred dollars putting together a multiple cat setup that honestly wouldnt likely work anyway...
the cats that are farther down the line will not heat up enough to work properly, so they will just collect unburnt fuel and shit that made it past the other cats and just pool it there... you will probably end up testing dirtier than before

vs - alcohol...
you spend about $20-30 on denatured alcohol (or far less on E85 if it is available)... run your tank down low... dump in the alcohol... drive around to get things heated up... get tested... walk out with an amazingly clean emissions report... go fill up like normal... and dont worry about a thing until it comes time to test again



passing with alcahol is cheap, easy, and works... what more could you want (other than no emissions testing in the first place)
 
if you are failing because its just a dirty motor, then pass it with alcohol and call it a day...

no sense spending several hundred dollars putting together a multiple cat setup that honestly wouldnt likely work anyway...
the cats that are farther down the line will not heat up enough to work properly, so they will just collect unburnt fuel and shit that made it past the other cats and just pool it there... you will probably end up testing dirtier than before

vs - alcohol...
you spend about $20-30 on denatured alcohol (or far less on E85 if it is available)... run your tank down low... dump in the alcohol... drive around to get things heated up... get tested... walk out with an amazingly clean emissions report... go fill up like normal... and dont worry about a thing until it comes time to test again

passing with alcohol is cheap, easy, and works... what more could you want (other than no emissions testing in the first place)
Exactly.
 
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