Cheating through E-Check with an exhaust cutout?

[Ian]

Well the time has come yet again for my 1994 plymouth acclaim v6 to pass Ohio’s E-check…and i’m a little uneasy about it…
To elaborate, when i took the test 2 years ago, it barely passed. they don’t use OBD2 on my car because it’s so old…instead they use the “sniffer” test where they jam a sensor up your exhaust pipe (its like they’re raping my poor car ._.). So anyway, last time i passed, but barely. The tech said that i barely passed the nitrogen level test, everything else was pretty good though.

Following this, a few months later I put a shiny new Cat in, feeling confident that it would get me to pass come 2 year later…

Fast forward to 2 years later…due to a head gasket, the engine has now been swapped with an identical mitsubishi v6 engine(from a junkyard), which is essentially the same as the old one, but it burns a little bit of oil. I’ve tested compression on all cylinders, and the rings seem fine. The PCV valve as well is functioning properly…so i’m certain this is just a little valve stem leak, as it only starts to spew some gray smoke after long idles (drive thru lines and such).

Now my shiny new cat I put in that while back has been dealing with getting a little oil fouled for a good year and a half now…

Now onto the question at hand that is: I am uncertain if the combination of “oil burning engine” and “oil fouled new-ish catalytic converter” is going to land me a big fat F come the test…so if it does…i have that really stupid idea of…putting an exhaust cutout on a post-cat exhaust location…

now hear me out!!! i don’t know EXACTLY what goes on during the test…i don’t know if they get a front row seat to all the jibletts in the underside of my car…but if they don’t, it would be hilarious and awesome if i welded an old throttle body in an inconspicuous exhaust location, routed a linkage for it under the dash, and just cracked it open as they asked me to rev up for the sniffer.

If the tech’s gotta be the one to get in my car and rev it up, i could even hook up the linkage to my cars actual throttle linkage before i go to take the test, and it would just dump most of the exhaust out the cutout when the tech revved itXDXD

problems with this: 1. obviously them noticing… but i had the feeling that the fat black woman doing the stuff during my last test couldn’t tell an airbox assembly from turbocharger…
2. i don’t really know how the sniffer works…as in, i don’t know if it determines ppm of emissions according to a comparison of the emissions to some ambient exhaust product like say co2, or if it just reads the amount of the emission sensed per unit of time… so like, if i dump 90% of my exhaust out the cutout, the emissions coming out of my exhaust pipe itself will be a tenth of what it was before, but the ratio of emissions to generic exhaust will still be the same…so if the sniffer sniffs ratio’s, this is useless…if the sniffer sniffs amounts, then wahoo^^

so yeah this seems ridiculous…and honestly i probally wouldn’t do it even if we determined it to be possible, i think i’m gonna try my luck stock first, and hope she will pass.

More less, i just got the idea out of necessity, and thought it would be fun to question its viability, in the hopes that maybe some poor soul with a super rank whip could blissfully ride off into the sunset with passing e-check papers after hilariously butchering their exhaust pipe.

Disclaimer: this likely won’t work at all and is really stupid. don’t try this until we get a lot of input from other people.

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[Joseph C]

I could be wrong but… Law says “attached,” I don’t know about “functioning.” As long as no Check Engine Light…

Eric lives in Ohio (I think,) perhaps he has some input on this?

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[Frank Heiser]

I’d just assume they WILL find it if you try that. I’m not sure how the system works either but if it does sense the amount coming out the pipe then it will likely be able to tell there’s not enough and there’s an exhaust leak somewhere.

Rule #5 of the Ohio Tailpipe test:
“Ensure the integrity of your exhaust system. Excessive exhaust leaks may cause your vehicle to be rejected from the emissions test and may be dangerous to the vehicle’s occupants.”

Personally I find states that do these tests to be a total waste of time and biased against low income people. Rich people drive nice cars with no problems, the rest of us can’t AFFORD to fix our crappy cars, lol.

BTW, be glad you’re not living in Taxachusetts like me, you practically have to keep your car 100% to pass the BS inspections up here.

[Joseph C]

[quote=”Nodak81″ post=162557]I’d just assume they WILL find it if you try that. I’m not sure how the system works either but if it does sense the amount coming out the pipe then it will likely be able to tell there’s not enough and there’s an exhaust leak somewhere.

Rule #5 of the Ohio Tailpipe test:
“Ensure the integrity of your exhaust system. Excessive exhaust leaks may cause your vehicle to be rejected from the emissions test and may be dangerous to the vehicle’s occupants.”

Personally I find states that do these tests to be a total waste of time and biased against low income people. Rich people drive nice cars with no problems, the rest of us can’t AFFORD to fix our crappy cars, lol.

BTW, be glad you’re not living in Taxachusetts like me, you practically have to keep your car 100% to pass the BS inspections up here.[/quote]
I was gonna say.. It IS 100% condition AFAIK, its as bad as Cali, and I moved out of there over how much stuff they wanted REPLACED for EVERY. LITTLE. THING..

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[Arthur Fieser Jr]

Okay so from what I’ve read about these sniffers, they seem to determine the values they base the test off of the initial readings during the test. I may not understand what you are saying in your post but what I’m getting is you are trying to reduce the amount of exhaust making it out of your tailpipe as to “trick” the sniffer into reading lower values. If that is what you are trying it won’t work because the sniffer actually reads the different gasses in parts per million not by their overall amount. So by reducing the exhaust flow it will still read the exhaust gasses are over level and it might say you have a leak too because it sees a lower than normal value.

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[Frank Heiser]

[quote=”GearheadTool” post=162560]
I was gonna say.. It IS 100% condition AFAIK, its as bad as Cali, and I moved out of there over how much stuff they wanted REPLACED for EVERY. LITTLE. THING..

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Actually it’s not as bad as it could be, my ’98 S10 is old enough now it doesn’t have to pass emissions anymore just no visible smoke. And they do allow for 1 “not ready” monitor during the emissions test, more than 1 though and they’ll fail you.
I miss Kentucky, you can register and drive virtually anything. Only risk is a cop pulling you over and citing you if it’s too big of a piece of crap.

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