Retrofitting to meet *original* standards?
So it's been quite an odyssey with the emissions.
The truck mechanics did a lot of adjustments, the best they could, but still couldn't get it to meet Federal regulations for this particular coach according to the book, or so they told me. They weren't trying to meet modern CA requirements.
They told me that it felt to them like it was running really well - and it sounded pretty good to me. But first she stalled when I gave her more gas. They reset it. Then she stalled when I took my foot off the gas. Then they reset it and I was able to drive her for a half hour, no problem. But she would never smog at that setting.
(Meanwhile, more evidence of the significant disagreement from one DMV clerk to the next about even the most fundamental standards and requirements. The clerk today actually told me that the minute I drove an out-of-state vehicle into the state that fees were due! She could not be swayed by the argument that every day tourists drive their cars into the state from out state; were fees due from them too?
She also told me that I couldn't have a proposed Non-Op on the road outside waiting for vehicle verification because a non-op meant that it couldn't be operated and therefore shouldn't be on the road. Could this possibly be right? My understanding was that a non-op is a vehicle one chooses not to operate.
I won't go further into that here.)
I do feel a nasty conclusion looming which is that I'll have to do some retrofitting just to get the coach to meet the original standards. I could replace the carburetor, I could add a second smog pump which there is room for but no evidence of. Could I should I would I even add a catalytic converter? Is there even room anywhere for it? Or should I just go out back and shoot myself?
(Note a small degree of frustration here, partly due to the fact that the day before, my movers flipped the moving truck containing many of my belongings into the path of all traffic on route 128 in the rain - thank god no one was hurt - which completely ate up all the time I still had available to solve to motor home problems before I have to leave the country on Monday. I lost a lot of papers and keepsakes of no value to anyone but myself.)
So. Any thoughts on what the steps should be? The mechanic told me that he suspected that this coach barely met the standards originally and may have been modified to allow it to run better. But he could see no evidence of the second pump ever having been there, although he recognized it was common at the time. I'm thinking that I should buy one and ask them to add it? I'd really rather keep it in CA but Mexico is looking more appealing all the time.
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