Okay let me just start off by saying I both agree and disagree with California’s Smog Laws. The shear number of people here means we have to have some sort of check of vehicle emissions output. I will concede to that. On the other hand; I own a whole lot of cars that Toyota no longer makes parts for, and that get driven very minimal miles every year. I would be a whole lot happier if I were able to actually modify and legally register cars. After all what do you do when an intake tube cracks? Junk the car because you can’t legally put something aftermarket on it? Come on!
Anyway, the Hachi is stock in the engine department, so California and their smog laws can suck it! The visual is taken care of. Passing the sniffer is another story.
I decided to start by working on the idle. The idle has been a bit erratic on the car since I picked it up. Most of the time it liked 1100 RPM, but sometimes if you shut it off hot and restarted it, it would stumble around at 600 RPM. I popped the throttle body off to start with a clean up. That “engine rebuild” must be somewhere with the new clutch and rebuilt differential that the spec sheet showed. Anyway I cleaned the 32 years of crap off the throttle body and idle air control valve, then re-assembled things.
Of course new Toyota gaskets were used. I spent some time re-setting the idle mixture screw as well as the idle adjustment screw. It idles better, but still wants to sit a bit higher than I would like at times.
To finish things up I took another crack at the rear wheel seal. It was still seeping a bit, but I knew I knocked the seal in further than I should have. Hopefully this closes this chapter for good. No this won’t matter for smog, but it will for the drive to San Jose.
With all of this done I drove the car down to San Jose to put it on the rolls today. Mission accomplished. The Hachi is California Legal at least for another year or two.
