My 993 - Emissions MOT failure

[Batchworth993]

My 993 C2 Targa (1997, 77,000 miles) has failed its MOT this morning (a bitterly cold morning, with the temperature guage in the car showing -4 degrees when I set off for the 15 mile or so run to the MOT station).

It failed the Emissions test - whilst the HC level and Lambda tests passed, the car failed on the CO level test.

The fail sheet shows that my car failed the Fast Idle Test (0.54% actual against 0.20% limit) and the Second Fast Idle Test (0.58% actual against the 0.20% limit).

The car has been regularly serviced - I had a 12,000 mile service at Northway's in November and the car has only travelled 200-300 miles since.

Any comments/feedback/ideas positively welcome.

Thanks in anticipation.

Victor
Batchworth 993

[Pickled Piper]

My 993 also struggles with this. The friendly MOT tester does something or other. I think he can bypass this part of the test. Sorry I can't remember the details.

I'm not really helping, am I.

pp

[neilcoker]

its in the sand !!

Pickled Piper said:

My 993 also struggles with this. The friendly MOT tester does something or other. I think he can bypass this part of the test. Sorry I can't remember the details.

I'm not really helping, am I.

pp

[marky911]

Pickled Piper said:

My 993 also struggles with this. The friendly MOT tester does something or other. I think he can bypass this part of the test. Sorry I can't remember the details.

I'm not really helping, am I.

pp

Does he stick the gas probe up another cars exhaust.

Edited to add -

We used to get the engine nice and hot and take it for a good run using lots of revs to blow the cobwebs away, basically an Italian tune-up! Would sometimes add a bottle of this stuff "Forte Gas Treatment". Full bottle in petrol tank, blast round for a few miles and try it. Very effective on diseasels, I'm guessing it works on petrols too.

Anything worse to sort than that and you need to be looking at sensors etc.

Edited by marky911 on Saturday 14th January 12:26

[mollytherocker]

Pickled Piper said:

My 993 also struggles with this. The friendly MOT tester does something or other. I think he can bypass this part of the test. Sorry I can't remember the details.

I'm not really helping, am I.

pp

Yes, he needs your MOT test station address!

MTR

PS - I am sure that its nothing underhand, just a correction for older cars.

[mph]

I had a similar problem on a BMW engined Morgan which was in good order. After going through the MOT basics we put the car on the analyser and it wouldn't get down to the correct level.

My MOT station were very helpful and said it's more common than I might realise - he told me that the sports Renault Megane (I think) as being particularly difficult to get through the results.

We eventually got the desired results on the Morgan by holding the car at high revs for quite a while and then dropping it to tickover and taking the reading.

He suggested that the car needs to be hot and that next time that I give the car a good thrashing and he'll put it on the analyser as soon as I turn up.

I imagine that a less experienced or less sympathetic tester would have just failed the car.

May not be the case for your car but it sounds like a good practice anyway.

Edited by mph on Saturday 14th January 14:15

[g7jhp]

Best to get your MOT aligned with your annual service and get your indie to do it. That way they can correct and problems.

[Nurburgsingh]

g7jhp said:

Best to get your MOT aligned with your annual service and get your indie to do it. That way they can correct and problems.

This!

[996ttalot]

Batchworth993 said:

My 993 C2 Targa (1997, 77,000 miles) has failed its MOT this morning (a bitterly cold morning, with the temperature guage in the car showing -4 degrees when I set off for the 15 mile or so run to the MOT station).

It failed the Emissions test - whilst the HC level and Lambda tests passed, the car failed on the CO level test.

The fail sheet shows that my car failed the Fast Idle Test (0.54% actual against 0.20% limit) and the Second Fast Idle Test (0.58% actual against the 0.20% limit).

The car has been regularly serviced - I had a 12,000 mile service at Northway's in November and the car has only travelled 200-300 miles since.

Any comments/feedback/ideas positively welcome.

Thanks in anticipation.

Victor
Batchworth 993

Do you have your MOT sheet from last time - be interesting to see the difference.

Best advice is to really get the car well up to temp for around 30 minutes. Then take it straight for testing. That is assuming that nothing else is wrong with the engine - could be lamba sensor etc that can cause high readings etc.

[993kimbo]

Sorry to hear this Victor, I can't help but can sympathise. Brass Monkeys this morning. Hope you get it sorted.

[Batchworth993]

Thanks everyone for your responses so far - I'm planning to try the "Forte Gas Treatment" and the "Italian tune-up method" as suggested so far.....

Any other ideas welcome.

Thanks again.

Victor
Batchworth993

[MrC986]

I had the same with after an OPC service on a 3.2 Boxster. I took it home, filled it with super-unleaded & 'spanked' it down the motorway for 25 miles & even then it wasn't quite in 'range' on the machine but they revved the car on the machine & strangely it passed. They had tried to say that the sports back box was to blame but it passed no problem for the next 2 yrs

[rog007]

I'm afraid that this is a common occurance and I suspect it's about time we put pen to paper to have this issue formally raised with the Minister responsible [http://www.dft.gov.uk/ministers/justine-greening/]. There's clearly a problem if otherwise healthy cars are failing arbitrary tests on equipment that by their very nature and usage are going to produce variable results. The consequence is people driving unnecessarily thus wasting scarce resources and incurring in many cases unnecessary costs from investigations and corrective work.

PS. Might be worth getting evidence of calibration of testing kit and own service record to make a challenge rather than just giving in and paying whatever to having things checked, replaced and re-tested. This is what I will do the next time one of my healthy and fully serviced vehicles fails.

[Batchworth993]

Thanks all for your comments and help - especially marky911 because his 2 pieces of advice (the Italian tune-up and Forte Gas Treatment) helped my car to sail through the MOT emissions re-test this morning.

Thanks marky911!!!!!!!!!!

[cragswinter]

needs doing on dads old merc as well, blast it down the motorway & back, passes every time

[mollytherocker]

Batchworth993 said:

Thanks all for your comments and help - especially marky911 because his 2 pieces of advice (the Italian tune-up and Forte Gas Treatment) helped my car to sail through the MOT emissions re-test this morning.

Thanks marky911!!!!!!!!!!

993's are so good, they even fix themselves!

MTR

[melv]

Aha! Italian tune-up! Any excuse...

I did wonder whether a fifteen mile run was enough to get the car hot....

[marky911]

Hey, no problem op,

it's what forums are for. Really glad it passed.