A friend gave me this van. Manual transmission (4 on the floor), awesome fold out benches.

Anyway, it didn't pass inspections. HC needs to be under 220 and I'm up near 2,400. CO is 2.8 instead of 1. My mechanic said his first guess without running a diagnostic is i'm only firing on half the pistons. I can feel the clutch and shifter grinding on gears 1 and 2. Third gear is smooth sailing!

And there's one conundrum I can sort of make sense of. The coolant overflow tank has a crack about halfway up, right above the cool line. I drove it once so far and it overheated and spewed coolant out of this crack. Later, I saw the fan/drive belt snapped and just hanging off. Well, there's why the engine was overheating and the coolant leaking out, not the worst fix.

First question is: what is the likelihood that I failed because of a severely overheated engine?

Second is, I only want to put about $800 max into this van, otherwise it's going to goodwill for the write-off. Have you ever heard of emissions being that screwed up and even being fixable at all? If so, at what cost?

Thanks in advance!

 

if you could post the all the reading from the emissions test it would help to determine the cause of the fail. Hopefully you have 5 gas results not 3 gas.


imo, it would be a miracle to fix a vehicle this old and be under $800. It would have to be well maintained to do so.

 

This is in Oregon, so it has three criteria for grading. One is HydroCarbons, I have 2429 should be 220. Second is Carbon Monoxide, I have 2.8 should be 1. Carbon Dioxide is next, with 6 and 6.

That's all they gave me on the paper

 

with a misfire condition the hc will be high, 02 would be high and co low due to no combustion.


any signs of oil consumption or rich running conditions?

 

Prob a bad cat. Fix your belts and the overflow tank. Pressure test the cooling system.
You may find its not that bad after all. However you will likely be chasing problems that need fixing along the way. Esp if the van has been neglected.