Hi All,

I've lurked here for years and am always impressed at how many times your sage advice has seen Winnie (my '83 245) through tough times.

This time, she's up against her two year smog check - registration is due in just two days. I've had her tested twice now. Here's how those two visits went:

Smog check 1: changed the oil, put premium fuel in, had a loose muffler seam (after the cat) re-welded. Took test. HC and CO were absolutely great <.02 each. NOx was over legal limit by 200-300 ppm.

Between visits: spent lots of time on brickboard.com, learned that one cause of high NOx is too much oxygen (lean). Built a smoke test machine and ran smoke up through the tail - no leaks observed. Ran the smoke through the intake starting before the AMM. Two sizeable leaks existed in the accordian air intake. Taped those up, retested with smoke, no leaks. While there, I sprayed some electronics cleaner through the AMM, and was otherwise very gentle with it. Replaced the air filter as well. ALSO, tried plugging the ICU vacuum port as suggested on a number of threads here.

Smog check 2: HC and CO just fine <.03 but NOx was now three or four times what it was before (3000-4000 ppm!!). The car was considered a 'gross polluter'.

And now I'm posting this question. I am not going to give up on Winnie. What are the steps I need to take (easiest, most logical, to most difficult) in order to get her to pass this check. The 60 day extension for the smog check is nearly a foregone conclusion at this point, even though it's an extra $50 to Big Brother.

She starts up kinda rough, idles kinda angrily. Acceleration is rock solid. I haven't done much to her in the past two years besides changing the oil and making sure the rest of the fluids are topped off.

Here's what I've gathered I need to do so far:
1) test AMM electrically (where's the DIY on this?)
2) new distributor cap, rotor, wires (totally necessary? can I test resistance first?
3) throttle body clean (DIY on this? would be a good opportunity to clean the flame trap as it's the '83 model and nearly inacessible)
4) tune up (this is one of my big questions - is there a good how-to on this here? is it somewhere in the 700-900 forums?)

As always, thanks all. You've already helped me with Winnie for years. I appreciate that.