my smog results were *horrible* today, enough to be qualified a Gross Polluter in California.


Idle
RPM 794
co2: 10.0%
o2 1.6%
HC max: 120, meas: 895
CO max: 1.0, meas: 6.66

2500RPM
RPM 2500
co2: 12.5%
o2: 0.8%
HC max: 150, meas: 228
CO max: 1.2, meas: 3.31

car info: 1985 244 DL
246k miles. smog vacuum canister was removed at one point, and reattached recently. once the car is warmed up, it runs great. starting is sometimes difficult, but will eventually. also have a squealing belt.
paid $500 for the thing. only need it to pass smog this once to get it registered in CA (currently TX plates) and then our county doesn't do any semiannual smog. halp?

 

california will give you $1000 or $1500 to scrap the car. you come out $500 or $1000 ahead!

who know what horrible things might be wrong. its cat may have been cut out, its lamda (o2 sensor circuit) may be all discombobulated. its running really rich and dirty. it could easily cost $1000+ to get it back to 'normal'.

we had to replace the cat and o2 sensor on our 1987 240 finally (original owners) a couple years ago to pass smog, now it passes with flying colors, but its never been messed with.

 

Yeah, well, CA will give you cash BUT it has to be a car you had in your name and such...Otherwise we all buy many $200 cars and sell them to the state for big bucks... The devil is in the details.

Dahling, is there a catalytic converter in the car?
Is there a Check Engine Light on?
Do you have an EGR valve? Probably not.

If all the SMOG equipment is there, (did it pass the visual ispection?), then a good tune up will do wonders if, as you say the car "runs good after warmed up". Also, get an Oxygen sensor, cheap for an '85... A new Water Temp. Sensor may solve your cold start problem... Volvos are easy to smog generally, and if the car runs well, meaning no misfires caused by valves, etc, smogging it should not be hard...

 

I don't think an 85 had a check engine light, there was no onboard diagnostics.

our 87 doesn't have a EGR, but my 92 does.

texans are infamous for 'test pipes' in place of the catalytic converter. sadly, a good quality cat is $$$$, and the cheap ones don't last more than a couple years (the good ones last 20+ years).

 

not sure about the cat. will be getting a chiltons in the next couple of days. (if i wait, my friend from the parts store will buy it for me and save $10. :P ) should make it way easier to trace through and figure out what is supposed to be where. the guy that i bought it from let his dad work on his car, and it's classic texas engineering, anything he didn't think was important he just cut and chucked (the vacuum canister, for example. he just cut hoses and threw the can into the trunk). we got it hooked back up, but had to get all new hoses and everything.

no check engine light, don't think it exists. passed visual smog no problem.

so, parts checklist so far is:
check for catalytic converter
o2 sensor
water temp sensor

will ask my mechanic friend exactly what he did as far as general maintenance. not sure, but i don't think he changed the oil or anything and it could probably use it... unfortunately he's since left town, but guess it's about time i learned to change my own oil, eh?

 

check the condition of the spark plugs and the distributor cap and rotor. if they look krufty, replace them AND the spark plug wires, and use Bougicord wires, not the junk they sell in the big box autoparts stores.

trouble with those books like Chiltons, they don't differentiate the multitudes of minor and not so minor engine variations in 240's over the 20 years they were made (early 1970s to 1993). an 85 is probably a LH II, early electronic injection, my 87 is LH 2.2, and 89+ were LH2.4, each are notably different in a bunch of details. The best of the books is the Bentleys book, but thats fairly expensive, and even it doesn't keep all the variations straight.

the BEST documentation was the factory greenbook stuff but thats out of print now. and it was expensive too, and was meant for professional mechanics.

 

yup, but you already have to be the owner of the car, it can't be done when smogging to register. add to that, the car still has texas plates, so this is a registration plus state change, so it doubly doesn't apply. dammit.

the rules on the scrapping are actually kinda funny. car has to have at least one side window glass, drivers seat, and be able to drive 10 yards under it's own power, plus more interesting requirements. http://www.smogcheck.ca.gov/80_BARRe...quirements.pdf

 

thanks, at least now i have a better idea of where to start! making a list, going to check each thing.

have also seen around that vacuum issues could be a thing? could that potentially make the numbers that high?

 

oh, another symptom might help diagnose is that it will idle great for a good long while (10-20min?) and then will rev high for about 30 seconds. then will drop back down to sounding great.

i'm so grateful for your help, i love that POS car. been on the lookout for a Volvo for a long time.

 

If you passed the "visual", that means that the catalytic converter is there...

 

here:
Amazon.com: Buying Choices: Volvo 240 Series: 1974 Thru 1986 (Hayne's Automotive Repair Manual)

These cut down, but not out of, the confusion.

 

well, it could mean there's a test pipe there that looks cat-like.

I've found the typical smog shop employee these days is increasingly less cognizant of older cars, especially pre-OBD2 (1996+). They now charge more to smog them because more tests have to be done (the OBD2 cars self test a bunch of stuff)

now that this one is a 'gross pollutter', its going to have to do a more expensive 'referreed' test involving dyno runs instead of just idling in place ;(

{suggestion for any other Californian's out there reading this who might be smogging a new-to-them car for the first time.... find a place that will do a offline pre-test run, usually for a nominal fee, before hooking up to DMV and doing the real test. this way if its going to fail badly, they can abort, and you can try to fix it /before/ you get 'gross polluttered'}

 

yeah, the smog place that i went to failed to explain that option to me, just asked "d'ya want a pretest?" and of course now i'm kicking myself for not asking him for more details before saying "nah, just smog it." dammit.

 

thinking we're going to get this: Extended Tune Up Kit and give the thing a good once over.
going to see if i can do any of this to check the o2 sensor: Oxygen Sensor Testing without having ECU (right?)
and then probably change out the cat, too, because even the best tune up probably won't drop *that* far, will it?

 

you have an ECU, its just an LH-II ECU, rather than LH 2.2 or 2.4 like the later cars.

and yeah, tahts the basic test. high impedance volt meter (most digital multimeters set on DC Volts should be fine), probe the single wire connector (the other 2-wire connector is for the heater), and you should see a signal that fluctuates back and forth around 0 to 1 volt and back. at idle, its probably every few seconds, at a elevated RPM its a bit faster. on a 240, the O2 sensor connectors are on the firewall, just past the windshield wiper motor, there's a round 1 pin and square 2 pin right next to each other.

I had to do this on our mercedes 260E (K-Jet in 1991, yeesh), what I did was take a single thin strand of copper wire (pulled out of some lamp cord) a few inches long, unplug the connector, stick the end of this bare wire in, and plug the connector back together, then wrapped this around my volt meters + probe, clipped the - probe to a good ground nearby.

 

Referee stations are not what they used to be, now they are just at colleges and are used for weird situations.
You can just go to a Test Only Stations for any GP and most smog shops are Test Only... So, don't sweat the Gross Polluter, it's no longer a death sentence, more of a scarlet letter of shame only you know about... This applies to metro areas such as San Diego, L.A., SF Bay Area, I don't know about counties where there is no regular smog testing.
And it goes without saying that part of any tune up would be fixing any and all vacuum leaks, they will mess you up!
As far as buying a Haines or worse a Chilton, I wouldn't do it... They used to be OK 30 years ago, now a waste. Any info you need, you can Google and get help.

 

Before looking into replacing the cat, I would do the following

Replace

1. Plugs
2. Wires
3 Cap
4. Rotor
5. Replace flame trap(Volvo's version of the PCV valve) and inspect the PCV system

Look to make sure that you have no vacuum leaks(especially the vacuum hose that runs from the intake to the firewall(that controls your HVAC functions)

Then take it in to see if it passes. No sense replacing a cat if you don't need to.

 

o2 sensor costs $16 dollars
4 plugs $9 dollars
dist cap and rotor $ 15 dollars
air filter $8 dollars
lucas fuel injector cleaner $6 dollars
Total: $54 dollars
Optional: worked for me
exhaust paste on the exhaust joints(if too corroded)
exhaust manifold gasket: $14 dollars
exhaust pipe gasket: $ 12 dollars..
cal cat in my neighborhood will cost $175 INSTALLED.....Santa Ana, CA.

exhaust clamps are 2 bucks each and would give you the chance to undo the exhaust joints and retighten with new clamps and smear the exhaust paste on the joints edges....my SMOG CHECK ONLY PLACE was fine with it and this guy is not dismissive of things at all..

 

Update: after digging more into the guts of this car, the previous owner (who had the car for 13 years!) was an idiot.
We replaced the air filter, and discovered what looked like an aquarium filter in its place. Complete with the slash where dude cut to remove the charcoal. *headdesk*
Replaced oil filter and did oil change. Oil was like jello sludge, it didn't flow, it oozed.
Replaced distributed cap and rotor.
Replaced spark plugs and plug wires.
We are going to replace the cat and o2 this weekend, have a friend who's good with auto welds.
Replaced the battery cables just cause they were gnarly. All the wiring on this poor cars looks like it was heavily influenced by drugs. Tweak central, man. Found a whole bunch of Volvo greenbook PDFs online, too, so we have more technical info to go on.
Thanks for the help. I hope I run into the *mumblegrumbleobscenity* that sold me this car, saying that we could just attach the charcoal canister and smog it. Ha!
Oh, and I'm also blessed with friends willing to pimp out their Schuck's discount. Yay!