New Vr6 owner, some advice appreciated.

[PROVR6 0]

Hi everyone. For a while now Ive been looking at Corrados (and Supras). A VR6 with black leather came up on Pheads thats was local and at a good price imo and I bought it (some of you may have seen it). The car was an MOT failure, mainly on the emissions. The guy was very friendly and even delivered the car by trailer to my house.

The garage suggested the car will need a new lambda sensor/cat convertor in order to pass.

 

The car does emit white/greyish smoke when revved from cold. Ive only had the opportunity of driving it about a 1/4 mile on private land and the smoke all but disappeared once warm.

 

Would changing the lambda/cat possibly reduce the smoke or could it still pass the MOT if it smoked a bit with the new parts?

 

One other question, are you allowed to drive on the road with no tax if you are booked in for an MOT? I belive you can without an MOT but not sure on the tax.

 

Itching to get the C on the road and will get some pics up soon .

 

Cheers Mark

[tonedef 9]

Hi everyone. For a while now Ive been looking at Corrados (and Supras). A VR6 with black leather came up on Pheads thats was local and at a good price imo and I bought it (some of you may have seen it). The car was an MOT failure, mainly on the emissions. The guy was very friendly and even delivered the car by trailer to my house.

The garage suggested the car will need a new lambda sensor/cat convertor in order to pass.

 

The car does emit white/greyish smoke when revved from cold. Ive only had the opportunity of driving it about a 1/4 mile on private land and the smoke all but disappeared once warm.

 

Would changing the lambda/cat possibly reduce the smoke or could it still pass the MOT if it smoked a bit with the new parts?

 

One other question, are you allowed to drive on the road with no tax if you are booked in for an MOT? I belive you can without an MOT but not sure on the tax.

 

Itching to get the C on the road and will get some pics up soon .

 

Cheers Mark

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

I always used to have emissions trouble with mine and scraped through the MOT a couple of times. When I was rebuilding the engine I noticed that one of the exhaust manifolds was warped on the gasket face so probably pulling in a fair amount of air and screwing the mixture. I machined the face flat again and it sailed through the MOT so it might have been a factor?

 

Yes, if you're booked for an MOT you can drive directly there and back with no road tax. :)

[tonytiger 0]

The garage suggested the car will need a new lambda sensor/cat convertor in order to pass.

 

Is that JUST a suggestion or are they confident? If you're doing the work yourself it's not so bad, but if you're paying somebody else then you don't want to be forking out unnecessarily.

 

Has it been on diagnostics? The diagnostics *may* give an indication as to what the problem is.

 

For the MOT, see if you can find a place that is helpful with older cars - rather than just any MOT place.

 

Good luck!

[dr_mat 0]

Yeah, get the ECU scanned, it'll tell you if the lambda is fooked. (It's the most likely cause of such problems.) Do you have a copy of the MOT failure record? It will have two readings on it - to some extent you can figure whether it's the catalyst or it's just running over-rich because of a failed lambda from those.

 

The white "smoke" is almost certainly just steam, which pretty much all cars emit until the exhaust is up to temperature.

[PROVR6 0]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

 

tonytiger- No its only a suggestion made by the MOT garage and it hasn't been on the diagnostics. From the brief research ive done on this forum the lambda does seem like a likely suspect. Ill have a garage undertake any work which is why Ive been looking for some reasonable priced parts for sale. My aim is to first get an MOT to see how the car runs generally and then take it to stealth for a good going over and recommendations. Ill guess ill have to bite the bullet and get the faults read.

 

dr mat- The failed emissions read as follows

 

fast idle test

co level 6.2% (max 0.3) FAIL

HC level 195ppm (max 200) Pass

Lambda 0.84 (min 0.97,max 1.03) Fail

 

2nd fast idle test

co level 6.49% (max 0.3) FAIL

HC level 196ppm (max 200) Pass

Lambda 0.82 (min 0.97,max 1.03) Fail

 

Natural idle test

co level 7.42% (max 0.5) FAIL

 

Does that indicate any problems with the lambda do you think? The seller did say it was running rich.