Quote:
Originally Posted by Howitzer
It's likely PBSASW,
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Not sure what PBSASW is exactly, perhaps power breaks steering alternator, those letters are in there anyway.
If so, that's partly correct. I found the damn noise, it was minor -- Jeez I feel like an amateur for my near major over-reaction -- I had put in a new water pump while I was at it and apparently the new one is not as wide in the 'block out to flange for pulley' dimension by a small amount, and the pulley was grazing off the vibration damper on a semi random basis.
I JB welded some thin washers on the back side of the pulley and that got rid of that.
However, today I went in to get it smogged -- wish I'd done it before this drama unfolded -- and I'm not looking good. Failed on HC and NOX, by a large margin on NOX at the 15 mph range.
I found this
site on the topic, I'm going to try to track it down. My CAT is only a couple years old, but the smog guy said on the older cars you sometimes have to replace them frequently.
My parts man in Berkeley tells me that new rings and redone head could help on the passing smog scene. I'm guessing that CATs wear out faster when they're required to work harder from excess smog.
Damn, I'd hate to replace the CAT and find out the problem was elsewhere but oh well.