So through calling the consumer affairs hotline again, I learned about smog refs - apparently, I'll be able to have them re-test it and if it fails no fee but if it passes I just pay the $8.25 fee I would have had to pay regardless. The only sucky thing is that there's no referee very close to where I am.... I guess it'll be worth the drive and hopefully I'll pass. It sounds like this is a good way to determine who was right and who was wrong though.

 

I have a similar digital timing light. It has up & down buttons where you can set the light to read the advanced degrees - say 10 degrees. But when you do that you're supposed to line up the timing marks to the zero degree mark.

Say you set the light to 12 degrees, you'd still adjust the timing so that the crank mark and the timing cover mark aligned with the zero marking. If you set the light to zero then you'd use the 12 degree marks instead.

It's a very accurate light.

 

So what the guy at the smog check place was doing was setting it to 10 degrees and then showing me that the white markers were mismatched. He adjusted to 0 degrees and they lined up. He was saying that because the white markers were misaligned while the light was set to 10 degrees, and because the sticker under the hood says "10 BTDC" or whatever, that the ignition timing was still off.

Now, I'm not sure what my mechanic set the degrees on his light to (I'd assume it was 0) but he was just showing me the the white markers matched up and when he bypassed the ignition the white markers were mismatched - this is why he was assuming the smog check place didn't bypass the ignition, but today when I went the guy showed me the jumper bypassing ignition and said it was still off... unless he didn't know how to use the light tool and was not interpreting the readings correctly, I don't know who to believe now.

 

... Just curious, but how old is the timing belt? Do you have some idea regarding the age of the belt that is on the car?

 

I'm not quite sure -how long are they supposed to last? It has probably been at least 4-5 years?

 

quote=jplee3;11763202]So I called the guy at the smog place back and told him about the bypass and he was like "oh yeah..." - he seemed to have forgotten or overlooked doing that and told me to bring it back in, etc. So I brought it back to the smog place today and they used a similar probe/strobe light, bypassed the ignition (blinking check engine light), and had me look at the markings - I have no idea why but the markings were still not aligned, and he said it's off by 10-degrees. Now, on his light-tool, he had a dial where he could set to 0 degrees to 10 degrees. When it was set to 0 degrees the white markers lined up but at 10 degrees they were off. The sticker under the hood says "10BTDC"
I don't recall if the light strobe my mechanic was using had a similar dial/gauge where you could set the degrees but I'm assuming he knew what he was looking at and had everything dialed in correctly... [/quote]

Did he have the proper terminals jumpered? Should be across TE1 & E1.

quote]What would cause something like this to happen? The guy at the smog place said the distribution system might have changed. The only 'major' work I've had done on this between 2014 and now are replacing the air conditioning system... would ignition timing being off be a result of something like that? [/quote]

The only way it could change is if the distributor lock-down bolts were loose; there are two. The odds of that are not good, but worth checking just to be sure. There is no reason working on the AC would require messing with the distributor. More likely you're just running into ignorance here. Engines with distributors are becoming rarer and rarer, so fewer people know how to check 'em.

 

quote=jplee3;11763202]So I called the guy at the smog place back and told him about the bypass and he was like "oh yeah..." - he seemed to have forgotten or overlooked doing that and told me to bring it back in, etc. So I brought it back to the smog place today and they used a similar probe/strobe light, bypassed the ignition (blinking check engine light), and had me look at the markings - I have no idea why but the markings were still not aligned, and he said it's off by 10-degrees. Now, on his light-tool, he had a dial where he could set to 0 degrees to 10 degrees. When it was set to 0 degrees the white markers lined up but at 10 degrees they were off. The sticker under the hood says "10BTDC"
I don't recall if the light strobe my mechanic was using had a similar dial/gauge where you could set the degrees but I'm assuming he knew what he was looking at and had everything dialed in correctly...

Did he have the proper terminals jumpered? Should be across TE1 & E1.

quote]What would cause something like this to happen? The guy at the smog place said the distribution system might have changed. The only 'major' work I've had done on this between 2014 and now are replacing the air conditioning system... would ignition timing being off be a result of something like that? [/quote]

The only way it could change is if the distributor lock-down bolts were loose; there are two. The odds of that are not good, but worth checking just to be sure. There is no reason working on the AC would require messing with the distributor. More likely you're just running into ignorance here. Engines with distributors are becoming rarer and rarer, so fewer people know how to check 'em.[/QUOTE]

I'm not completely sure if he had the correct terminals jumpered - what he showed me to "prove" they were though was the blinking check engine light. Also, when he jumpered them, I heard the engine slightly rev for a second or two. I think this is what happened when my mechanic jumpered them (though, not sure about the blinking check engine light).

I'm planning to 'settle' this with the smog ref - if it passes, I'll pay what I would have had to pay anyway ($8.25 additional at the place it failed at if I were to take it back and have them re-test). If it fails, then they'll have confirmed the smog place was right and my mechanic needs to fix it. I trust my mechanic though because he's an old school guy who knows Camrys in and out. The guys at the smog place, I'm not so sure they knew what they were doing - one guy was shining the light in and asked the other guy "how do you use this thing?" in reference to interpreting the LED read-out. LOL. It just sucks because what was originally 30 minutes of my time has now exponentially increased into this mess. At the end of it, I think we're just going to donate the car (it's registered to my parents and they were talking about doing so once we're done with it)

 

"... unless he didn't know how to use the light tool and was not interpreting the readings correctly" (quote function not working again)

I'd say that sounds more like it. If distributor timing is set to 10* and you set the light to 10* and see that the crank mark aligns with zero mark, that is correct, if you then set the light to zero you'll see that the crank mark then aligns with the 10* BTDC - but it's the same reading, just showing a different way to see it.

I prefer to set light to the advanced spec and look at the zero mark. But, all this depends on jumping the terminals in the diagnostic connector to get the right reading.

 

What you're describing mostly makes sense to me, but from what he was showing me, the crank mark was off when he set the light to 10-degrees with the jumper supposedly on the right terminals (indicating 10 BTDC). When he set the light to to zero though, the crank mark aligned to 0 (this was still while the jumper was in place). So his interpretation was that the timing was off, because if the jumper/bypass indicating 10 BTDC was in place, and if he set the light to 10-degrees, then the crank mark should align to the zero mark at that point. I guess the only thing that might make his findings moot is if he actually placed the jumper in the wrong position. I really couldn't tell because I didn't look too closely... stupid because I took a picture of when my mechanic put the jumper in place and didn't think to pull out my phone to compare :T But given the fact that I would trust my mechanic more, I would defer towards my mechanic on figuring out which terminal(s) to jump versus the smog guy who I've never dealt with before. We'll see what the smog ref finds on Friday. For all I know, my mechanic could be totally wrong, but he seems to have quite a good amount of experience with all kinds of cars, especially Toyotas.

 

So I took it to a smog ref today and the car passed the smog check. So the guy at the smog place I went to had no idea what he was doing... I filed a complaint with the DCA - hopefully they'll investigate and the place will refund me as I spent my own time and gas driving around and trying to figure out what was wrong because of the guy's incompetence. Either way, once the investigation is up I'm planning to write a negative Yelp review and will file a complaint with the BBB if no refund is offered.

 

You mind putting this place on blast so people in the area no not to go there for smog on their older Camrys? Seems like a relevant request seeing all the greif you went through... thanks!

 

yeah, i had good luck going through a ref too for a cat problem. unfortunately, you can't just go to a ref to begin with. you gotta fail @ the idiot test center down the street before getting to go to someone who actually went to school to learn how cars work to be a referee.
tony

 

Haha there would be no smog check places in business if you could just go straight to a ref. But it would also eliminate a ton of incompetence and dishonest guys And the lines for smog checks would be darned-awful.

In Cali, you gotta make sure the tech understands older OBDI cars, they are virtually ALL the same:

1) Jump the DLC with a paperclip
2) Point the gun at the timing marks
3) Mark should be at the spec'ed number

The END. Don't play around with the fancy timing guns 'set to 10', use a plain old gun, or a 'fancy one' set at '0'
The idea is to check BASE timing, which on all these cars is set and checked only with the DLC jumped with a paperclip.. so before you take it in do the above and check it with your own light, then have the tech do the same and that should be the end of it...

You said "set at '0'" which is exactly what the guy did and the crank marks lined up but he *insisted* that the timing was off because when he set the gun to "10" the marks were misaligned. This just proves that he had NO idea how to use the timing gun/light because he thought he was supposed to set it to 10-degrees!!! I think I pointed this out in my complaint with DCA but didn't realize that this is the part that he was doing wrong... Hopefully I can follow-up and add that tidbit of info as it's pretty important and proves the guy had no idea how to use it. When my mechanic showed me, I think he was using an older timing light that he had laying around and don't recall him screwing around with setting the degrees on it. He showed me the marks were spot on, and I'm assuming his gun was on 0 by default. I think the problem was two-fold with this guy - 1) he didn't set the bypass jumper the first time and then 2) the second time he set it but then he set the timing gun to 10 degrees as well, which it seems resulted in overcompensation of the measurement and defeated the purpose of bypassing the ignition, and then claimed the timing mark was "off" (of course, he showed it when it was 0 and the crank marks were lined up but he insisted that he had to set the timing to 10-degrees on the gun itself).

I'm assuming then, that if when bypassing the jumper you leave the gun at "0 degrees" that this would mean that you could measure the timing accurately without bypassing the jumper by setting the gun to 10-degrees?

 

In Cali, you gotta make sure the tech understands older OBDI cars, they are virtually ALL the same:

1) Jump the DLC with a paperclip
2) Point the gun at the timing marks
3) Mark should be at the spec'ed number

The END. Don't play around with the fancy timing guns 'set to 10', use a plain old gun, or a 'fancy one' set at '0'
The idea is to check BASE timing, which on all these cars is set and checked only with the DLC jumped with a paperclip.. so before you take it in do the above and check it with your own light, then have the tech do the same and that should be the end of it...

 

Interesting and I am glad it's all worked out. I am also glad I don't have a smog check bull to go through. Sheesh what a chore.