Today I learned about smog checks.
It seems that the state of California has both a "Test & Repair" certified site and a "Test Only" certified site. When you go to get your registration renewed, they will typically require that you go to a "Test Only" site. This is, most likely, because there's so many cars which make it through the first time, and they also don't want to flood repair shops with perfectly functional cars.
So I follow my mom to a shop down Almaden Expressway called Paragon or something like that. They tell me that I need to go to a "Test Only" shop because thats what it says on my registration renewal notice. A recommendation is made to go to "In & Out Smog Check," which I end up at shortly thereafter. It'll be about $58 and I need to wait for 3 other cars to finish. A 4runner, an Oldsmobile, and an Integra. I found out that, amazingly enough, the ancient Oldsmobile is rear wheel drive. Man, that just makes the heavy car even heavier.
Anyways, everything's fine so far. The dyno check worked out. The fuel cap pressure is good. And then they check my engine timing. On the hood, there's a sticker that says 15 +- 2 degrees BTDC (Before Top Dead Center). My engine was set at 21 degrees; whoever did it might have read the marks wrong. Whoops. So they tell me they'll have to fail it and I need to get that fixed. One of the guys down at the corner at a collision shop should be able to do it cheaply and they can test it again afterwards. Since it failed the first time, the first retest is free.
Now, something else I learned today is that many cars can change the timing just by rotating the distributor cap. It's reasonable, you just delay or advance the timing a bit by shifting when the spark happens. It's a lot easier than taking the timing belt off to readjust every time.
I also learned that my distributor cap is locked down. It was designed to be NOT a place to change the timing. Well that sucks. The mechanic wasn't exactly happy and explained that to me. He also said that there's one more way to do it without the time-consuming timing belt adjustments, but it'll cost more since it takes a while and isn't guarenteed to work. Okay, $50, I'm okay with that. I need this done today or tomorrow anyways to avoid late fees.
So while Honda decided that it was a good idea to make the distributor cap fit in one way only, I guess to prevent do-it-yourselfers from fouling that up, they did put in an electronic adjustment. In a black box that has way too many screws, there is what most likely is a potentiometer that electronically does the same thing. The bad news? It's under a riveted bracket. Freakin' a..... It's like they don't trust most people to do it right or something. Well, then again, this was 1990. Tweaking electronics was certainly not something people felt as comfortable with back then as it is today. And it's not like it'd be cheap to do this digitally either. Heck, the computer "bling bling" back then was a 486.
Anyways, after drilling out the rivets, he tweaked it as close as he could to 15, which was 16. Good enough. Sent me back to get it tested before he sealed it up. I went back, got it passed, paid for the smog check, and came back. He made a joke about it being a good thing that I didn't just run off without paying him his $50. Heh heh, it's nice that he trusted me, but then again he still had a few of my car's screws. Trying to dig up equivalents would just be too much trouble. He riveted the bracket back in, zip tied the other cables, and I paid him his $50.
On my way home, I was curious whether or not this will fix the starting problem the car has been having the past few days. Sometimes it'll work perfectly. Sometimes it'll start, run a few cycles, and then stop. Guess I'll just have to drive and find out.