I noticed Hot Rod Magazine’s editor John McGann is asking some interesting questions about Calif OBD I emission testing in November’s editorial, quick summary below:
"[McGann’s] '93 GMC C1500 … pickup has been rock-solid reliable until two years ago—the first time it failed a smog test since I bought it. … replaced the converter with a generic parts store converter. It passed easily then, only to fail another emissions test two years later. … replaced it with a much more expensive converter from Magnaflow, and the car again passed … Am I being passively legislated out of my pickup by making it cost-prohibitive to continue to operate it in this state? "
Cali is the birth place of the hot rods, and used to be the best place on Earth to have a hot rod, but now, sadly, they are hated by the majority of the voters… I will just stop there… lol
Everything is reliable until it wears out or plugs up. A cat isn’t the only part on the car. A throttle body injector can run rich when it’s old and some sensors can be worn away. Some o2 sensors can fail partially under bad conditions. A remanufactured engine may be needed but nobody wants to pay for one. Maybe we will be motivated to repair now that new car prices are so high. Those pre-1974 cars are some real polluters. The blue smoke on startup with my 73 Comet was phenominal. Without the straight 30 WT the smoke was all the time. Laws have not taken everything away.
We stopped in CA on the way to Nam. You could write your name in the smog it was so thick. Air quality is still a major problem in CA. A lot of people…lot of industry…lots of cars…mountains that act as a natural barrier.
I live in California. I am generally sympathetic to classic car owners until I am forced to follow behind one on the road and can smell the overwhelming exhaust. The exhaust is clear I don’t see anything, just the super strong smell of fuel like I’m sniffing vapors right out of the can. Not cool.
Me too, but ‘Frisco and Travis AFB were no where near as bad as the air pollution in Los Angeles. Tokyo was very bad too, spent 10 months in Japan before going to ‘Nam, police wore surgical masks (as if that would help), Mt Fuji was visible from our barracks but the view was usually obscured by the air pollution.
The emissions test that the truck has to pass today is the same test it had to pass in 1993. If it won’t pass a smog test now but did 25 years ago, the problem is obviously with the truck.
Have the requirements changed?
I don’t see anything to indicate they have been.
So how is this a legislative issue?
So it passed for many years until just two years ago when there have been replacement cats every two years. Sounds like either cheap cats or the engine is finally worn enough to pass material that is killing them.
Good comments. I presume they will be addressed by the editor’s future articles in the magazine. If the engine is shot, sort of hard to understand how the editor of the magazine, what with all his engine knowledge, staff knowledge, and technical resources, wouldn’t already know that; i.e. if he isn’t able to discover why cats are required every two years to pass Calif emissions, who can?
They used to have a “Hot Rod to the Rescue” article in most issues. That was really interesting imo. They’d show how they figure out and fix whatever was causing a problem some selected classic car owner couldn’t figure out for themselves, after diy’er working on it for a considerable time. I particularly liked their “we’ll figure this out no matter what it takes” attitude. Made for good reading. The problem w/that however is that it sometimes it probably cost quite a bit of money.
Might have something to do with David Freiburger stepping down as the Editor In Chief of Hot Rod magazine, don’t remember when David Freiburger left, but it probably went down hill after that… I think he worked for it from Feb 1992 until Feb 2022, but he was not the editor and chief the whole time… But he wasn’t in management for years, HRM is on it’s 4th Editor and Chief since he stepped down…
Revealing actual root cause may not sell as many magazines as getting fans of classic cars riled up about the govmint doing stuff to “take” them away through onerous compliance requirements…
