Well, today was my smog test and to no surprise, my CJ passed the snif test with flying colors…. however, the smog nazis still FAILED me!! Why you might ask? Well, after about an hour of close scrutiny and interogating, this is what i was told (and i’m not making any of this up):

1. my check engine light was not properly labled “check engine” (just so you know, i reused my old factory “check carb” lamp on the dash).

2. there was a vacuum plug on the last port of the CTO that was supposed to be open to atmosphere. (i simply forgot to remove it)

3. the hose connecting my PCV breather to the air intake was a radiator hose and not a fuel line hose.

4. my charcoal canister had a crack on one of the ports that i fixed with a little JB weld to which they said “gluing a port is not an acceptable repair even if it works.”

5. my idle was running at about 950-1000 RPM and needed to be at 750 RPM.

Anyway, thanks to the help of John Strenk, all these things have now been fixed and I will go in for another appointment on 02/15/05. Wish me luck.

From the day I bought my CJ, the one upgrade I have been been just dying to install is a Howell Throttle Body Fuel Injection System. For one, I really needed it so that I could pass a visual smog inspection here in the Peoples Republic of California, but the other reason was so that I could rip out and toss the POS Carter BBD carburetor that I had under the hood! No more crappy idle, no more stalling at the most inopportune moments and no more miles and miles of vacuum lines under the hood to deal with, hooray!!

Anyway, I finally saved up enough money and bought one of these kits on eBay. I also picked up a K&N knock off air intake system to complete the setup. To see my complete write-up, click on the link below:

Howell TBI Installation Write-Up