I appreciate all of the replies, everyone! Thank you! Please keep them coming! Any help is great!
Originally Posted By: Vikas
OP needs to summarize what has been done so far to the vehicle. I vaguely recall him mentioning burning substantial amount of oil. If that recollection is true, it is going to be tough to pass the stricter CA emission test.
The car does lose some oil. It has a pretty bad leak from the oil pan and does burn some oil, but never blows blue or black smoke. I got this car from a buddy back in January of 2011 and smogged it without even changing the oil. It passed easily on HCs & CO, but was near the max limit on NOX. I drove it around for a thousand miles or so like that.
About 5000 miles ago (8-9 months ago) I replaced the fuel filter, NGK spark plugs, PCV valve, and oxygen sensor.
About 2000 miles ago the ignition distributor kicked the bucket and I replaced it with a new distributor that included cap & rotor. While I had the distributor replaced, I also replaced the ignition wires with brand new OEM NGK wires. The timing was set to 18 degrees (as suggested by alldatapro.com). I also replaced the engine air filter at the same time. I took this opportunity to also check for vacuum leaks by using a smoke machine tool designed for finding leaks... no leaks were found!
I took it in for smog this May and it failed horribly, which is when I posted up this thread. The smog tech suggested a new cat. I drained out the engine oil (which had Kreen in it) and refilled with MaxLife 10w-30. I also dumped in a bottle of Chevron Techron Fuel Injector cleaner. I then ran some Seafoam through a vacuum line. I did about 500 miles worth of driving over a weekend and then had the catalytic converter replaced. That same day I replaced the spark plugs again with the OEM NGKs and replaced the oxygen sensor again with the OEM NTK sensor (just in case it was damaged by the Seafoam treatment).
I took it back in for a pre-smog. Nox was now within spec for the 15mph & 25mph tests, but HCs got worse and CO stayed the same.
I talked to another smog tech and he suggested replacing almost everything that had to do with the cooling system. The radiator was replaced just before I bought the car, so I replaced the thermostat & thermostat gasket, radiator cap (it failed a pressure test), coolant temp sensor (from engine to ECU), and the coolant (with Honda brand coolant).
I also had a vacuum leak test performed again. A small leak was found at the throttle body. Two gaskets were replaced and also used some exhaust sealant to patch it up real nice. Tested for vacuum leaks after and nothing was detected. I pulled the spark plugs again and found two of them were slightly white while the other two were normal looking. Since I had an extra set of plugs sitting around (shoot they are only $1.49/plug) I swapped in ANOTHER set of new plugs all gapped to OEM specs. I also had a mechanic check the timing again (18 degrees) and it was perfect.
Stopped by for another pre-test after driving the car really hard for an hour. Everything easily passed at 15mph. NOX and CO also did well on the 25mph test, but HCs barely failed! I retarded the timing to 16 degrees per the suggestion of the smog tech. HCs actually went up a couple points. I tried the denatured alcohol trick which only made things worse.
Today I dumped in half a bottle of the Amsoil Fuel PI and filled the tank with 87. I am now going to check compression on all the cylinders and have a valve adjustment done.
I have thought about retiring the car for cash, but I recently put a lot of money into this car via a new clutch, new trailing arm bushings, new shocks, new rear lower control arms + bushings, a new brake master cylinder, new rear brakes, and new tires. The car gets 32-33mpg and drives amazingly well. I refuse to give up on this thing an will replace the engine if it comes down to it.
I again thank everyone for their time and help. The BITOG forums have helped me save another car from the crusher a couple years back and I have a feeling I can save this one as well.