Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty94cx
Yes it's always cheaper to diagnosis than throw parts at it. I commend you for getting compression and vacuum readings. They tell you so much. Cats don't fail there is always some problem that makes them fail. Glad you passed. Seafoam is also goo for decarboning I used to use castles fireball stuff. Man.
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Actually I reacted prematurely. Haven't taken another smog test yet, and my car is still smoking during warm-up at least. I've done compression and vacuum testing and they were good.
I think I have a better idea and a few new details. I think that it wasn't the water, just it was just the car warming up. I think the car smokes when cold, and after it warms up to operating temperature, it stops smoking, but high RPM's are necessary. I think if I let the car cool back down, or start it up again tomorrow morning, it's going to smoke. There could be many reasons for this and I'm reading up on it around the internet. I would call it 'smoke on cold start'. Might be normal. I doubt I failed those smog tests because the car wasn't properly warmed up, because even if it wasn't properly warmed up, I don't think it could give 3000+ NOx without something being wrong. But I don't know.
Read one guy had a car that smoked a lot. He cleaned out a few vacuum lines and blew some carb cleaner and compressed air through the EGR line. He said it didn't smoke after that. Maybe I should check and clean my vacuum lines, maybe it's coolant, who knows. Would burnt coolant cause a smog fail and how would it affect HC, CO, and NOx readings. Whew boy, but at least I'm getting somewhere, and can at least make the car stop smoking, if only temporarily.
Also my oil seems watery. Maybe the water injection had something to do with it, or maybe it's been accumulating since I changed the oil, I don't know. Probably the water treatment because I think that might've happened to someone else too.
Car is probably running rich or lean. Maybe a sensor is defective and giving the wrong readings. That's the direction I'm going in for now.
I might change my head gasket. Maybe it is a coolant leak. I've never done that before and that should be fun. But I am reading a lot of reports that in cold weather, it can be normal while the car is warming up. Eh... who knows. The car does stop smoking after it warms up, and doesn't smoke all the time, so that's really good. I guess I could test my head gasket further.