I have a little more experience with this, since
Sacramento has been testing cars on rollers for at
least 6 years.
About the year 2001, Sac. County added Test Only for
smog tests. It is a blanket test for models of cars
where a statistically significant percentage of cars
fail on the first test. My 84 RX-7 GSL-SE was the car
I had at the time. I asked the technician about the
new requirement at the time since I had never had a
problem with getting a smog test with the fuel
injected engine. Apparently the pre-86 RX-7's have a
lot of failures with all the carburated models. My car
was lumped into that category even though has fuel
injection. I think it even passed 1995 specs.
I talked to someone at the test station I previously
used before the car was lumped into Test Only, and he
said that almost every carburated RX-7 run on the dyno
failed the first time and had to be adjusted or
repaired somehow. Test Only stations are a little
harder to find but if you look in the free newspapers
like the Flea Market and Pennysaver there are usually
ads and/or coupons for inexpensive tests.
Move forward to 2004, I bought Charlie's 1986 Civic
SI, Killer. It also was also listed as Test Only.
Again, this car has fuel injection and passed, (even
with 225 k miles, but it was a little closer). I guess
that though, as a class, the carburated Civics get
very good mileage and have a relativly low emissions
of greenhouse gasses, they must fail at the tailpipe a
fair amount of the time. Damn you Honda, making cars
that require tuneups so infrequently, that people
forget to do them and end up failing smog tests, so I
have to go to a Test Only station! ;o)
Terry
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