Just checking in on the Bronco forums to see if anyone has any questions that I could answer, I did enough work on my ex-Bronco in 12 years to know them fairly well! Anyway, I noticed in this thread that I never answered several people's questions about what year vehicle the emissions testing starts. In Colorado it is 30 years and my Bronco was 22 years old. Eight years - I had nowhere to put a Bronco for eight years. Even at 25 years it would have been 2015 before I could forget about the emissions testing. I would have to keep going through this crap every year until then; and I'm pretty sure that there is a rule saying you can only get one waiver over the lifetime of the vehicle. The waiver is supposed to be so you have time to repair the vehicle. In my case that probably meant a new engine and I had nowhere to do it myself and not enough money to have it done for me. I was able to borrow some $ to get the Explorer but nobody would lend me any money to get a new engine for the Bronco. All this, even though mine was properly maintained since day one (I had all the service records from new), it was clean, it ran perfectly, it didn't smoke or burn oil and only had around 160K. That motor is good for probably another 100,000 miles at the least. But it was throwing out CO2 and nothing we did could get it down. I got close but still no cigar and that was the sixth and last time. So I hope all is well here with your Broncos, I am not of much help in the Explorer forums and I hope that I won't ever be; since the reason that I was so knowledgable about Broncos is because of all the repair work that I had to do to on mine! So I don't want to become an Explorer expert, I just want to be able to drive, you know? But I'll check in here from time to time to see if I have any answers for anyone and I hope that I won't be haunting the Explorer forums...

 

Hey JB thanks for visiting you're always welcome to stop bye and throw your 2 cents in Hopefully the Explorer is worth the money you paid, i know from my own experience that they are very comfy even just to relax in for a minute.

So far all has been pretty quiet around these parts, but otherwise normal.

Emissions suck which is why i was super glad i got a 78 bronco, 35 years old and no emissions

 

I feel your pain with what you have gone through.

In california they have been tightening the allowable emissions every year. Every time we go back, what we are allowed to have out of our tail pipe has been reduced. Over the past 4 years, I have had several cars fail that used to pass with flying colors...simply because cali is doing their best to get these vehicles off the road.

It makes no sense how they continue to reduce the allowable emissions. These vehicles are only getting older...I'm not sure how they can expect a vehicle to comply with standards that it didn't have to when new.

It's extremely sad, but it's gotten so bad down here, that just about everyone I know just pays the "$150" "pass smog" fee...which is wrong, but that's what it's come to. The way the govt is going, all older vehicles WILL be off the road. It's not if, it's when.

 

Yes, I too believe that the government is trying to get these old vehicles off the road. I also believe that the state trains people to to sudden stops and starts to make spikes in the readings. I can't prove that, but every time I watched them test my Bronco they would make sudden starts and stops. I mean, they would have it on the rollers for around 20 minutes. That's ridiculous. It's as if they keep it on there until they get a big enough spike, although I can't see the government actually telling the employees to try to make old vehicles fail. I just think the training is probably biased to get the old ones to fail. And it's only gonna get worse.

PS - I didn't have the option to pay a $150 "smog fee" to pass, I would have done that in a second!

 

Every time i see the "starting stopping spikes" It pisses me off, they shouldn't be doing that just to get the vehicles to fail. It is sort of understandable if their choice is either, do it, or be fired, but still. If they do it to force your vehicle to fail... Man..

 

Gruesome you just drop that "pig" in vegas on your way through. We will give that big 400 a darn nice home and you can visit whenever you want. Or look into maintaining a P O Box and title it out of state.

 

Haha thanks but i doubt we will move anytime soon. It would require a lot of money that we don't have to move. Also i would do what i could to keep this beastie, even if i had to run to the hills and live out of the back.