Here is a question that I have been wanting to know since my beggining few months of turbo research. I have yet to find a thread that has mentioned much about passing inspection on a 5th gen.
I know I have much more research to do on turboing my lude where as I am not planning on doing this for quite sometime yet.
I have searched through out the forums and haven't found any info on this, I may be searching the wrong key words and spending a lot of time searching through other threads about other very informative things on turbos thats not towards the question while at work isn't the greatest Idea.
On the 5th gens in order to tune a turbo-ed lude it must use an OBD1 ECU, This brings up the question how can this be passed for inspection (assuming a full turbo set-up, sleeves, piston, rings, larger injectors, etc.) To my understanding this should throw a CEL on when the OBD2 ECU is thrown back in (different F/A ratio to be picked up by the O2 sensors?) to pass for inspection since it needs to pass the smog test for 97 and up. OR I may be completely wrong and the O2 sensors and ECU will do its jobs and level this out to return it back to stock? even with the larger injectors and lower compression rate?
BTW you should update your profile to include your location. The answer to this depends on where you live.
Passing emissions is Very Hard in a turbo car, unless you are lucky enough to live in the 3 or so states with no emissions testing at all. Nearly all states now require passing an OBD2 scanner test, which means you have to have some OBD2 ECU in the car (and passing readyness tests) when it is scanned.
There is a hack way I know to do this. It's not pretty, but it works if you are careful.
For inspection, you will have to:
1) Plug back in the stock ECU.
2) Arrange a way to drive the injectors. You can either replace your larger ones directly with stock, or run a piggyback hack (like a VAFC) with a large fixed fuel cut. The VAFC maxes out at -40% I think, so it would work with injectors 40% larger than stock.
3) Stay out of boost. The simplest way is to hold the wastegate open constantly. You can do this with bailing wire from Home Depot and wrap it around the WG arm and wire it to something fixed. That should ensure you are always in vacuum.
4) Drive always in closed loop when you are about to get inspected. OL shouldn't be that bad if you have done all of the previous things, but to be safe staying low throttle is a wise idea. CL ensures that you will be running with AFR feedback, and the ECU will keep you at 14.7 on its own.
Now if you happen to live in a place that has a visual inspection, you are totally screwed. There is no way to pass visual with an aftermarket turbo, so this whole theory is moot anyways. If you want to get extreme you can play games like selling the car to a friend and avoid the inspection process, but that sh*t gets really sketchy and the DMV may catch on to you at some point.
not that it mattered, but i passed without de-tuning.
It was within the first 200 miles of rebuilding my motor and I had it running off an FMU for the break-in procedure. Since it was a 92, they just did the sniffer test and even though I had a straight pipe instead of a cat, I still passed.
I was kinda surprised, but I kinda expected since one of my buddies at the time rebuilt a 300zx TT and passed with straight pipes as well.
Since it was a 92, they just did the sniffer test and even though I had a straight pipe instead of a cat, I still passed.
OBD1 cars have a hell of a lot easier time with inspections. FYI the guy who was asking was OBD2, so there's a lot more pain involved there. OBD1 guys are free from the scanner inspection, which IMO is the hardest part. Emissions are pretty easy to pass in a Honda, FI or not.
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