Ok, so the Miata is my summer car and it's been up on jackstands during the winter while I get MegaSquirt sorted out and my turbo installed-well, my tag is up for renewal and I have to take it in to get inspected. My stock O2 sensor was stripped all to hell when I finally got the damn thing out with a pipe wrench so I can't just throw the stock ECU back in with the narrowband. I have MS up and running with AEM wideband with AFM for now. I've been searching all over the internet on tips for passing just a normal emissions test where they put the wand into the exhaust-no dyno or anything. So, do I just need to make sure I'm at 14.7:1 AFR on idle (where I'll be running the test) and maybe retard the timing about 10 degrees at idle (which would bring me to about TDC or 5 degrees BTDC). My plan is to bring my laptop with me, drive over there, make the appropriate changes in MT so that I can pass, then change it afterwards. Any tips or does this sound right? just wanted to run it by you guys thanks!

 

I've asked this question, a few times, and could never get a direct answer, I hope you get one. I have a few months before my inspection is due.

 

This isn't really rocket science, particularly if you have the luxury of tuning the car at the test station. There's even a section of the manual which talks about the effects of making +/- adjustments to fuel and timing upon the various measured gasses: MS1 Extra Tuning Manual

Long story short: make sure you're running right around 14.7:1 in the cells that will be tested. Set gEGO so that it's off at idle RPM, and tweak that cell by hand. Let it do its thing otherwise, with 1% steps and a fairly long step-step delay, like maybe 75 to 100 ignition events. Retard the timing a bit, but don't get too carried away unless you have to.

 

ok, thanks-I won't be able to tune at the station-there is always a huge line and they run people through there QUICK-two people in the same bay at once...I just noticed another issue that could cause me a problem: the check engine light doesn't come on during startup-do they usually look for that? seems like they would because I know that if the light is on you fail and they probably want to make sure you didn't disable the light...maybe I could rig up a switch to the light through the harness and momentarily light it up during start up to trick them? I'm standalone if you didn't guess...hmm

 

If you are running the MS in standalone the CEL wont come on at startup. Chances are you will get by without them noticing. I know i have in the past.

 

I'm running parallel and clipped the wire to the CEL in my boomslang so it never comes on. It wasn't a problem getting it inspected last year.

 

PM Paul about this. He just took his gf's na NA thru inspection. He has a good timing map for the 94 that will help with emissions. His map helped my car pass with flying colors too when it was NA.

 

I working on a theory about having the EVAP solenoid being controlled by MS, but suddenly realized that if I ran it to open when the fan mod was activated, it'd probably be enough fuel vapor to keep the idle up (for a bit but you only need a few seconds before MS recovers itself if it is having compensation problems) and the short time is all you need for the EVAP system to hit critical vacuum.