I have a hard time seeing how any gasses from the passenger side bank of cylinders could make it up the drivers' side of the y pipe on my '89 all the way to the e. manifold, where my o2 sensor resides. So in effect, my o2 sensor never sees any gasses from the passenger side bank of cylinders.

I would not stress it. If the 2 banks are burning fuel so disproportiontly, you money is better spent having the heads rebuilt.

 

Being that this engine is carburetor and not TBI or MPI the ECM does not have a lot of control of the mixture. And on many of them I have seen just one sensor usually on the left manifold. The single side sampling will be sufficient. Plus there is no way to add a second sensor to the ECM. If you tried to wire them in series it would throw the check light in a few short miles.

 

You can leave the smog pump on and cut the air pipe where it enters the exhaust system(which I believe is on the back of the manifolds on that van) and just let the air blow out into the engine compartment,its not gonna hurt anything and isn't real noisy. If possible,you may be able to remove the air pump and run a shorter belt.You will have to look at the belt routing to see if this will work on your vehicle. I have bypassed a few smog pumps and never had 02 sensor code problems because of no air being pumped into the exhaust system.

 

i checked it out, my smog pump is on its own belt, so disabling would be a simple function. It appears to just run into the manifold at the back. nothing too major. I understand there are some legality issues with that, but seeing that my state has no vehichle inspections, let alone emissions inspections it appears I could manage to avoid any major issues there. would it be of any benefit to re -route the air from the smog pump back into the new exhaust or would that be useless and a waste of money. one crazy idea i had would be to route it into the intake forcing air into it, but imagine that would be a bad idea, i dont know enough to confirm that, just one of my ideas. anyhow it looks like its a straight forward operation, install headers, drill hole and weld in o2 sensor on one side, put new exhaust on it and im good to go. i appreciate the help so far, i will post some pictures once im all done. of course if anyone has any ideas or info to share i would certainly take it all with a smile, thanks for the help so far!!

 

My smog pump injects air into the E manifold and the Cat con. There are check valves on these lines. Without the smog pump operational, the valves fail over time and put exhaust gasses back into the engine compartment via the smog pump. Of course this can be remedied by blocking those lines and not relying on the check valves..

I now leave my smog pump connected, because it freezes within the 2 years between smog checks.

I think I remember the member 'Mobile Auto Repair' claiming he does have Smog inspections in the County he lives in in Texas.

Good luck with your install.

If you post pics and part numbers, and procedural details of the install you will never die.

 

texas is only that state that I am currently living in, not my state of residence or the state where my vehichle is registered(lucky for me they have no inspections there). as far as a "green" vehicles go, this will not be one, but I ride my bicycle to work everyday unless its raining and this is not my daily driver so im doing my part, it all balances out. I will certainly post pictures and part numbers once completed. any thoughts on leaving the pump on there and re-routing the air from it to the intake? would that have any performance value whatsoever, or would it be a huge wast of my time and potentially lead to issues?

 

Huge waste of time. It is not strong enough to compress air, only move it against exhaust pressure. Removing it will cause you to loose some coolant and find new lengths of bolts to hold on brackets. I'd just cut the fan belt, and leave the pump where it is, and block off the lines.

 

I got my headman headers( http://www.jegs.com/i/Hedman/500/79030/10002/-1 ) in the mail and took them to get the coating, I got a zirconium coating done nearby in boerne texas, I got sidepipes for it as well, should take less than a week to get the coating done on the headers and then another week or two to get it all on there...I have photos but its not letting me upload them here, I will put them in my profile. I will keep posts of my progress.

 

Nope, the county south of me does. And the county that my mother lives in does. But that may change in a few years there has been talk of maybe adding smog inspections here.

 

I got my headman headers zirconium coated and they are getting installed as we speak, I got side pipes as well ready to to go on once the headers are on and everything is in tune. I will keep you posted as work gets accomplished.