NOx, Arizona and the emissions Racket!

Own a car in Arizona? It's going to cost you $32 more per year and that's a problem

 


So I get this email the other day.  It's from the MVD...


I thought, well, wonder what this is about.   Here's what it said...

"Beginning Dec. 1, Arizona motorists expecting vehicle registration renewals will see a new Public Safety Fee. The fee was established by state law to support public safety and Highway Patrol operations. The fee goes into effect for registrations due in January which can be paid as early as Dec. 1, and immediately for newly registered vehicles.

The fee will be collected during the vehicle-registration process administered by the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division. Arizona statute established the method for collecting the fee and sets the process for determining the amount based on a formula designed to support Highway Patrol operations.

Highway Patrol operations — among the most visible functions of the Arizona Department of Public Safety — include response to collisions on Arizona highways, enforcing state laws designed to keep the motoring public safe, arresting impaired drivers, assisting motorists in distress, air-rescue operations and patrolling more than 6,800 miles of highways.

Most motorists will pay $32 per vehicle, per year. Street-legal golf carts and primarily off-highway vehicles will pay $5. Those who register a vehicle annually or pay for a two- or five-year registration will pay the entire amount up front for each registered year.

The funds raised through the Public Safety Fee will not only provide necessary dollars for public safety, but will advance maintenance and construction of Arizona’s highway infrastructure, including the state’s Key Commerce Corridors that support economic development around the state.

Over the past decade, much of the Highway Patrol’s budget was considered part of the Arizona Highway User Revenue Fund, the gas-tax account that supports Arizona roadways, including law-enforcement support. The new $32 Public Safety Fee will allow gas-tax money to support roadway maintenance and construction, while providing a different source of funding for Highway Patrol operations."





 This is literally the first I was hearing about this.  So I did a little digging and found that Arizona Governor Doug " The Duce " Ducey signed a bill (HB 2166) into law allowing the assessment of this new fee on every street legal vehicle in Arizona.

 The reason for this new tax...err...fee...is simple.

We're not buying enough gas.  Since gas tax collections are down due to all those hybrids and light rail commuters, the money for public safety has to come from somewhere and Governor Ducey  doesn't want it coming out of the state general fund anymore.  He's too busy raiding that for our "business friendly" economy.  You know, the one that suppresses wages and encourages employers to come here for the cheap labor.

Oh and you Tree Hugging Prius drivers out there...You're getting hit too.  The VLT is going up from 1% of the value of your Green Machine to 30%.  Apparently the State House didn't feel you were paying your "fair share."

I won't mince words here.  This is in fact a TAX designed to set up a separate pool of money expressly for the use of the state's police force, the Department of Public Safety (DPS.)  But hold on there, it's also supposed to provide money for highway construction and maintenance.   Something the Gas tax currently does and will continue to do.

What The F***?

 So with the stroke of a pen we've effectively created a separate budget with a separate funding source with complete autonomy to do...what we were already doing.

What is this going to do for public safety anyway  IS DPS going to buy more Ford Excursions to blast down I-17 gulping down gallons of gas per mile?  Will it put more officer's on the road?  Oh yeah and that bit about funding road improvements?

Last I heard DPS was recruiting more officers not laying them off.  The last part really bothers me though.  The one that says the extra money will also fund "maintenance and construction of the state's highway Infrastructure."

In the next paragraph we're told the gas tax will continue to fund those projects as well.  Folks, the busiest highways in the Phoenix Metro area are I-10 and I-17, US 60 with ancillary freeways like Loop 202, 101, 303, 143 and so on.  The busiest by far are the Interstates which receive FEDERAL FUNDING for their construction and maintenance!   That's also where the bulk of DPS enforcement occurs.

They expect to bring in around $150 million a year from this new fee with the money destined for " public safety and Highway Patrol Operations." *Note:  That number was based on a fee of $18.06 not the $32 cited in the MVD notice...(somebody got greedy)
 
 This is in addition to the standard VLT (based on valuation and slowly decreases over time) and the Air Quality Fee.  Not to mention the fee for emissions testing that 90% of most daily driven vehicles must pay at the time of registration.

I could go into all the legalese and political justifications made for this but there are really two glaring issues as I see it.



The First is, Exactly WHAT public safety  and Patrol operations are being paid for with this influx of revenue?   Are we going to stop all those wrong way drivers?  Are we going to trade the Impalas and Crown Vics for Hellcats?  Maybe bring back the freeway Photo Radar?  I see nothing new here, nothing that justifies such a hefty price to effectively do what we're already doing now.  

In short I don't buy it.  Arizona has a long history of "misplacing" public funds to private pockets.  This looks like another opportunity for such hi jinx.  State Route 51 almost didn't get built because of such shenanigans.  

That or it's just another opportunity to set up a funding source for more corporate tax breaks.  

Remember that part about Hybrid owners paying their "fair share?"  That term doesn't appear to apply to big business in Arizona.  74% of corporations in the state paid $50 or less in corporate taxes as of January 2018.  My personal income tax bill is higher than that and I haven't made anywhere near the millions these companies do.



The second is a little more fringe but worth mentioning.  I'm always suspicious when a separate and distinct pool of taxpayer money is set up exclusively for a police force.  It's another step toward an autonomous police entity with weakened oversight and ultimately the first stepping stone toward a literal "police state."

 In the current political climate that's not as big a stretch as it used to be. 

And while I'm at it...Where the hell are the Trump supporters and TEA party people on this?  This is a TAX levied without a vote, without referendum and without consent.  

This is another attack on "the little guy" and more of them are Red than Blue in this state.

You guys are OK with that? 

I'm not.

At worst this is a chilling political development and at best another example of ignoring classical conservative values of smaller government and less bureaucracy.  

But then the last "classical" Republican in the state was John McCain and Trumpies didn't like him no matter how many medals he had or how far right he blew from moderate.

We have highway funds mixed in with DPS funds now and nothing but the standard "public safety" tagline for its reason for being.

Finally, you may not care about an extra $32 bucks a year but for those on the lower end of the income spectrum who have to drive to work that increase effectively doubles the cost of vehicle registration.

It is in practice a regressive tax affecting those who can afford it least.

I suppose you're OK with that too.

This kind of crap needs to stop.  This is literally taxation without representation which can be found in that other of most treasured American Historical Documents, The Declaration of Independence. 



Or have you forgotten that too....

This may seem like a petty gripe over a local fee but remember that all politics are indeed local.  It's small steps that lead to tyranny. 

Car culture - Getting out and about

Lately it's come to my attention that I spend entirely too much of my free time hanging around my house.  A condition I decided to rectify a couple of weeks ago.

I ventured out to (or more correctly went BACK to) one of Arizona's best known weekly car meetups.  The McDonald's Car show at the Scottsdale Pavilions.  I hadn't been out there in about 10 years so I didn't know what to expect.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a strong representation of the Phoenix car culture.


For over 20 years people have been coming from all over the metro Phoenix area to show off rides of every conceivable permutation of the car hobby.

I was there back when it started as an informal event in a relatively unused parking lot in a far corner of Scottsdale.  A friend of mine actually grew a thriving auto body and paint business from customers met there that exists to this day.  That's the power of the community this event fosters.

From 57 Chevy's to Teslas and even bikes you're bound to find something that meets your fancy and someone to trade tall tales and memories.

You never know what you're going to find but be sure to show up early (starts at 4PM every Saturday) and wear your most comfortable shoes because there's usually 250 to 400 cars to see not counting the periphery of late comers and motorcycles.

Check out the video below for a taste of the action.  If you love cars, do yourself a favor and check it out yourself every Saturday from 4PM to 11PM at the McDonalds at the Scottsdale Pavilions ( also known as Talking Stick) off the 101 Freeway and Indian Bend Road.  Admission is free and parking is abundant.

Back on the Road: Formula VS Smog Check - Epilogue

A lot can happen in 5 months...

Back in December when I posted my last entry to this blog I wasn't sure what my future held.  All I had was hope and a belief that if I didn't give up things would eventually work out.

Which is exactly how I approached getting the Formula back on the road.

I'm not especially religious but I do believe the old adage that the good Lord doesn't give you anything you can't handle.

December is a pretty long time between posts but I haven't posted anything about the Formula since October of 2015!  That's because, well, honestly there was nothing to post about.

That changed recently.  I picked up some work in March which improved my fortunes.  Now the Formula was always at the top of my priority list but it became even more so as the weeks wore on and it became apparent that what I was driving to work was not ideal for the purpose.  

The Formula needed to be back on the road...Fast!

Of course that meant getting rid of the demons that had kept it chained to the garage for 2 years.  

Recall that we had already dealt with the Fuel Pressure regulator, EGR, got a new intake elbow and ran a few tanks of the proper octane fuel.  Sadly it wasn't enough.

The emissions testing results from 2015 while less than helpful at diagnosing the problem still pointed to a likely culprit.  A high HC reading, that's raw fuel.  High CO?  sloppy ignition system.  High NOx?  Combustion chamber temps too high.  All of them too high?  That points to a bad catalytic converter plain and simple.  

Lot's of things can go wrong with modern emissions control systems on cars but the symptoms would show up long before a failing smog test.  As in the car literally wouldn't run if you could get it to start at all if it was anything but the Cat.

1995 was an interesting year for auto makers.  It was the last year before they formally adopted the new ODB2 standard in emissions controls.  20 years later it's a pain in the ass.  For example, the Formula has a diagnostic port identical to an OBD2 connector but it isn't.  It's OBD1 which means you have a lot fewer codes to help point you in the direction of what's wrong.  Not to mention finding a scan tool that you can actually plug into it!

Still, there are basic emission codes that can be set if something was really going wrong and luckily none of them were set.  Although that's not definitive either since OBD1 has a far shallower pool of data to draw from.  That means things have to be really going sideways before you get any information out of that port.  By that time the code probably doesn't mean much to you.  

So...

Fast forward to the solution to my problem and we open on me in the parking lot of Mesa Muffler early on a Saturday morning.  


For less than $200 I was able to drive out with a new catalytic converter an hour later.  I immediately took the car out on the freeway to warm up the converter and then held my breath and got off on the exit that led to the emissions testing station.

As I pulled into the station, took my ticket and waited in a long line for my turn at the indignity of an Arizona emissions test my time had finally come.

I pulled up onto the rollers, turned off the car and dutifully retired to a cramped booth while the technician did his best to ruin my day...

He didn't.   At the end of it all I actually shook his hand and thanked him!  The Formula was finally legal after 2 years and all it took was a catalytic converter....



Oh yeah, and a MAP sensor, EGR, Fuel Pressure Regulator, Intake Elbow...

I documented the whole thing in the video below.  I'd have liked to get more of the actual test but I was rather forcefully discouraged by the technician.  

There was still work to do before the Formula started commuting duty, however.

We needed tires, badly.  We also needed a new belt tensioner pulley and weirdly a new gear for the headlight pop-up motor.  

So what's left?

I still need to deal with the fuel injectors as at least one is still leaking.  I still need to fix the headliner, get the hatch repainted.  All the normal stuff that a 20+ year old car would need.

In case you're interested, I've also included  a few videos below of the new tires and how I fixed the headlight motor.  I've been posting regular videos of my adventures with the Formula on my YouTube channel.  Check it out as I tend to update it more than this blog...obviously.

More as it happens!  

Triple A Motor Club - Full Price, partial membership UPDATED!

See that thing up there?  That's a Triple A Motor club card.  A representation of just one of dozens of associated motorist clubs in the nation under the Triple A banner.

An organization over 100 years old built on serving the needs of an increasingly mobile nation. 

Providing everything from road maps and travel planning services to car insurance and of course what everybody joins up for.... The towing.

Drive anything with a few miles on it and you'll soon see the benefit of carrying that little gold card the first time you don't have to pay that $200+ towing bill for getting ol' reliable hauled back home from Grandma's house somewhere over the river and through the woods.

For your annual dues you get varying levels of benefits.  I'm only concerned with the road service as I've found most of Triple A's so-called discounts to be anything but.  A quick flip through their bi-monthly glossy magazine reveals stunning photography of places you can't afford to go and discounts that won't help you get there any faster.

With your membership you'll get the added benefit of constant junk mail and offers for overpriced and under performing auto and life insurance.  

Their Triple A certified auto repair?  One of those vaulted establishments cost my cousin a transmission.

So yeah, it's pretty much for the towing.

Somewhere along the line, however, it seems Triple A is more about those glossy pages than service.

A belief evidenced by my recent contact with their membership department.

As I've said before, 2016 hasn't been a great year so when it came down to paying the $97 renewal or the light bill, the light bill won.

That was roughly 2 months ago but as I said at the beginning of this article, you just don't drive an old car without having something to help with the inevitable towing bill.

Now I can excuse the organization's push into more areas of revenue generation.  People have less to spend so you better give them more options to spend with you rather than somewhere else.

But when you compromise your core service offering there's a problem.

It all started with a phone call early this morning.  One that yielded a recording telling me to call back during "business hours" which might as well be "banker's hours."

OK, at least I wasn't calling for a tow truck.

Their "business hours" are 8 to 5 and I called at 9.  I figured I'd let the poor cubicle dweller who got to suffer me at least get his first cup of coffee. 

I have a soft spot for inbound call center workers.  Imagine working 8 to 12 hours a day fielding phone calls from people who rarely just call to express their love and admiration.

With that in mind I called primarily to follow-up on my renewal which I completed online.  It seems the Arizona Triple A website is less than accurate when it comes to membership status.  Even when payment was tendered the site still insisted that my membership had expired.  

Worse both the website and my paperwork had insisted that I'd received a new membership card.

I hadn't.

The friendly representative on the other end of the line answered my queries, ensured that I was indeed covered with my recently paid renewal and all was well.

Ah, but you know I just had to screw it up. 

I made the mistake of asking a probing question.  My membership expired October 31st this was December 27th, almost 2 full months had passed.

I asked if my expiration date would now change due to my renewal being 2 months tardy.  It was supposed to be a rhetorical question...

It wasn't.

I was informed that my membership would still expire on October 31st of the following year.  That didn't seem right.

When questioned further I was told that I was within a "grace period" for renewal which allowed me to avoid an extra "reactivation fee."  

That's nice, except when I asked if that meant my benefits were extended through that "grace period" as well I was told a firm....No.

Uh, something's wrong here...

I told the friendly cubicle dweller on the phone that it didn't seem quite right that I was paying for a year's worth of service and getting only 10 months.  I verified that this was indeed the case with him  and reluctantly, said representative confirmed my conclusion.

When you call a call center these days you usually get a recorded message saying something along the lines of, " This call may be recorded for Quality Control purposes..."

I reminded my hapless cubicle compadre of that and said I was pleased that this call was indeed being recorded because this was not a good policy nor proper treatment of a member.

I also informed him ( for the sake of Quality Control of course) that there are other similar competing services out there and perhaps next year I'll investigate their offerings instead of renewing my membership.

It seems to me there may even be a potential FTC issue here.  A grace period is fine if you're waiving late fees but if you're going to charge me full price for something I'm not getting that's at the least bad business.

At worst, fraud.

So for the time being I at least have some level of roadside assistance from Triple A but I have to wonder if I wouldn't be better served elsewhere.

Maybe I'd have gotten better treatment If I booked a cruise...

UPDATE:  I wrote this article on December 27th.  My replacement Membership card just showed up today January 12th.  16 DAYS!  and yes, it still has the October expiration date.  

Kinda Quiet around here... Here's why.

So I know I haven't posted much of anything lately. That has a lot to do with not having anything to really share.  Reason being things are not going well in the old wallet these days and my Formula is still unregistered because I haven't been able to come up with the approximately $500 it's going to take to replace the catalytic converter and get the registration renewed.  

FYI, the good state of Arizona charges $8 for the first past due month then an additional $4  for each subsequent month the registration is is late.  So if I can't get it registered for a year it could cost me the original $30 plus an additional $52.

The El Camino needed attention too and I ended up manually doing a 4 tire rotation (5 with the spare) and some brake work.  Brake work that came about because of the brakes getting noisier and a slight pull to the right on applying them.  Nothing worth a video and still not quite right but passable.

So now I have two half-assed cars...

So when money's tight bad things tend to happen and one of them is in the video below.  My water main broke leaving me on the hook for $575 to get it fixed.  

Needless to say I'm on the payment plan.  A BALLOON payment plan that's seriously cutting into the whole food and shelter thing.

But this too shall pass and someday soon I'll be back wrenching on the Formula again in hopes of getting that bad bird back on the boulevard....(see what I did there...lol) 

For now here's a little slice of a day in the life of elcaminoguy....

Formula vs Smog Check: 2nd Time not the charm

The saga continues...

The story so far.  My 1995 Formula failed it's emissions test.  We did some diagnostics and found out that the EGR, PCV, and Fuel Pressure regulator were all bad.  We also knew from the first test that the major problem with the car was it was running too rich.

There was also a suspicious rattling under the car which upon inspection showed a problem with the catalytic converter.  It's the original and a couple of soft taps with a rubber mallet confirmed it.
  
So after more diagnostics that involved chasing down vacuum leaks, replacing any crispy hoses I could find that were causing them, checking the EGR solenoid and changing the oil it was finally time to try again.

The first test a month earlier gave us readings of:

HC 1.57           .8 is the max

CO 13.77     12.0 is the max

NOx 5.99       2.0 is the max

Today's second pass at it:

HC 1.57           .8 is the max

CO 15.57     12.0 is the max

NOx 4.59       2.0 is the max

So we've taken a chunk out of our high NOx reading, done nothing for the HC but what's this?  The CO went up!  That's actually a good thing because it means we've got better fuel control.  Instead of gas leaking past the regulator it's staying in the combustion chamber.  In effect the gas is where it should be but there's too much of it!

It's also another indication (in addition to reduced NOx) that the EGR is working since it's recirculating exhaust vapor back into the combustion process.  It's taking that raw and partially burned gas and adding it back in just as the EGR system is designed to do.

The problem is that the exhaust is so rich with fuel that it adds to the CO problem.  HC stays the same because we're not adding any more raw fuel into the exhaust stream.  That any reading stayed the same across 2 tests a month apart also indicates that the catalytic converter is doing virtually nothing to help us.  It's also indicative that our rich mixture is being caused by something other than what's been fixed.

I'll cut to the chase.  We've still got an over-fueling problem and it's likely related to a leaky fuel injector.  Admittedly, all I have to back up my diagnosis is some fuel injection tools, a multi-meter and a code scanner that works with OBD1.  

And a bit of experience...

Before I changed the Fuel Pressure Regulator I'd have intermittent long starts when the car was cold.  With some of the fuel pressure bypassing the rail for places less useful it wasn't a surprise.  

What was a surprise had to do with warm starts.   I thought my fuel pressure problems were over but noticed longer starts (more cranking) after the car sat for a short period of time (15 minutes to an hour).  

That has everything to do with the fuel rail bleeding off pressure when the car was warm.  Remember that when the engine's cold the fuel pump will prime the rail but when it's warm it shouldn't need to.  So when it does it has to build up pressure again.

I also noticed that during these longer warm starts I'd sometimes see a bit of grey smoke out of the exhausts.  That told me there was un-burned fuel in the cylinders.  With the engine off the only way that can happen is if something is dripping fuel into them.

Something like a leaky fuel injector.  Which is the likely cause of my over-fueling issue.  Of course without a scan tool that can read fuel trim or at least the state of the O2 sensors it's still a guess.  

The only way to know for sure without one is to pull the injectors out of the manifold while still attached to the fuel rail.  Then turn the key on and prime them to see if they leak.  That's a story for the next installment.  Yes, I can put my fuel pressure gauge on the rail but that only tells me there's a problem on the rail not where it is.

So that's the story up to now.  I'm convinced I have a leaky injector and a bad catalytic converter even given my limited resources to diagnose the problem.

But when I got the results for the second test which I half expected to be a disappointment anyway something struck me.

Those results I showed you earlier?  They're absolutely useless for diagnosis.  All I know is that the car failed.  For all that time and trouble I have no indication what the conditions of the failure were.

In Arizona it's always been that way as I'm sure it is in other parts of the country.  But like everything else that's supposed to be "progressive" in the state Arizona's managed to turn it into a profit center.

Which is a great segue to the video below.  It's a bit of rant but for me it was a bit of an epiphany as well.  
Stay tuned!