At Home Mechanic

Sisyphus was sentenced to hard labor… with a twist. His eternal punishment was to roll a giant bolder up a very steep mountain. Straining with all of his might, he had to use every ounce of strength in his body to the point that he nearly died. After endless toil, Sisyphus finally gets the giant bolder to the very peak of the steep mountain. For one brief moment he is allowed the satisfaction of achieving his goal. But the satisfaction is fleeting as the giant bolder slips away and rolls back to the very bottom of the steep mountain. So Sisyphus must begin again. And the process is repeated over and over for all time.

I am a bit like Sisyphus when it comes to working on my car. Do not get me wrong; working on my hobby car is a pleasure, a labor of love. But as soon as I finish one job successfully I allow myself a seeming fleeting moment of satisfaction before I plunge into my next project.

My most recently completed project was preparing my 1987 Honda CRX Si for its semiannual California smog inspection. Notoriously tough, a car cannot get its California registration for the coming year without passing the test. Not only does the exhaust have to blow cleanly, but also all the visible parts of the engine must be the original parts that came from the factory. If any of the visible engine parts have been replaced by non-factory parts, they must carry a California Air Resources Board (CARB) tag that proves that they have been tested and approved for use on a car operating in California. Something as benign as a tuned exhaust manifold MUST be approved by the CARB and carry a tag that identifies it as an approved part. If the tag is missing, the smog tech testing the car for emissions can instantly fail the car regardless of the exhaust’s cleanliness.

I have slightly modified my car’s engine over the years and not all of the parts I have used carry the all-important CARB tag. So I have put a lot of effort into restoring the stock factory pieces to the engine where I previously had high performance but non-approved parts. I take this job seriously because if the car does not pass and is barred from legal operation on California streets my entire investment into this car will have gone down the drain.

After much personal stress and strain I got my car into optimal tune for passing the sniffer test and I removed all of the non-CARB parts from the outside of the engine compartment so that even a detailed inspection would not find an offending part.

I watched and waited with bated breath as my hobby car was being tested for emissions. The smog tech’s grim face betrayed no emotion as the engine was put through it paces on California’s mandated dynamometer test. The tension was killing me; would the car pass the test or would if be failed and I would have to diagnose and fix whatever defect the testing had revealed? Only five or ten minutes had passed but it seemed like an eternity to me. Finally, the smog tech gave me a small grin and told me that the car had passed. Like Sisyphus, I had finished rolling my personal giant bolder to the top of the mountain and I reveled in the joy of accomplishment.

I drove the car home and immediately replaced the stock parts that I had used to pass the smog test with the high performance parts. Even though my car runs as clean, if not cleaner, with the high performance parts on the engine I needed to use the inefficient stock parts to pass the test. With the car configured and tuned for its full potential I took it for a victory lap of the neighborhood, savoring all the power and performance I had wrought from this car.

Ahhh, that feels good. But now it is time to start planning the next project. And so my personal giant bolder has rolled to the bottom of the steep mountain and I must begin the arduous task of rolling it back up to the top. Maybe this time I will allow myself a couple of days to enjoy my success before I start the process again.