Nice title, yes? Is it true? YES.
Today. My son finally took the car to the auto repair shop which is directly across the street from one of the State's emissions testing facilities.
The prognosis? There is a line coming off the vapor can that state employees pinch off with vice grips and then do a pressure check on the gas tank and line going up to the can. Well, on cars such as mine, you cannot USE vise grips on that line because it is a solid, hard-plastic line. To use vise-grips means destroying the line.
Guess what they did and guess what was destroyed? Yup, didn't take much for you to figure that one out. They broke the plastic line and come to find out, GM doesn't make that plastic line any more, it's not available. The mechanic - also the shop's owner - said he has never seen anything like that in his 26 years of repairing vehicles and specializing in repairing emissions problems. On cars such as mine? It is procedure to NOT check the pressure since they can't without damaging the car.
This repair owner is a pretty cool guy, from what I am getting on the phone. He has volunteer to help us make the State make this right.
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Long interlude. Not going into all the details, but the manager at the emissions station admitted what they had done was wrong - but flat denied helping out in any way, shape or form, this to the shop owner, not to me.
She picked the fight with the wrong person, which would be me. It took about half an hour of phone calls and I found myself on the other end of the line with the Project Manager of Emissions, including emissions stations, over the entire State of Arizona. We got into it. Since they should not have even performed this test on that car and since the rest of the car passed emissions and equipment, there should be nothing more to it. Go into the system, change it to pass and be done with it.
Nope. Not a happening event. Fine, then please call this Donna woman at the emissions station and ask her why, exactly, it is that the repair shop can't just use tubing bought from Home Depot (his words, not mine) and install it since there IS no option to replace it from the factory/dealer, he already tried and they said it is no longer made. ??? The state is going to pay for this, that's all there is to it. I don't care how much trouble I have to go to, they did wrong and they think because they are the government they can just tell me no and I will simply go away.
Sorry, Charlie, but that IRKS me to NO end which only motivates me MORE. But, I was amazed at getting this man on the other end of the line so quickly. I did not think I was going to get to talk to the director of the entire program after only having tried for 30 minutes to get ANYWHERE with it.
Meanwhile, the shop owner calls me back just a few minutes ago (after starting this entry even) and states that he found one from a friend/acquaintance junk yard for $25. Yes, let's do that, get the thing fixed, get it back to emissions, get it passed and get it registered! Registration for that car is like $18, lol. It costs less to register it than to take it through emissions!
However, the State of Arizona is not going to get a pass on this. They are going to pay for all of this and that's that.
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