FlossyTheSmart

The EGR valve in the smart is a mixing chamber which brings exhaust back into the air going to the engine, in order to increase temperatures, which should result in lower NOx emissions. The issue in the smart is that the soot and gunk in the exhaust solidifies inside the EGR valve, which eventually stops the flapper inside from moving. Once it stops moving, you'll get an engine light (Probably with code P0403 or P0405), and you'll be stuck in limp mode, which will reduce your power and prevent you from exceeding 3000 RPM. At that point, you need to clean out the EGR valve. Once you've done it once, you're not going to want to do it again, so you'll want to block or delete your EGR. There are generally 3 methods for preventing the EGR from clogging up, each with it's own advantages and disadvantages. 1) EGR Emulator This method is probably the easiest method, however, if your EGR valve isn't freshly cleaned, you may still have an issue in the future. Essentially, you get a circuit board that plugs in in place of the EGR valve. This circuit tells the EDG that the EGR valve is responding normally, and everything is working fine. In reality, once you've plugged the emulator in, the EGR valve has no power running to it, and the flapper inside should be stuck in its default position, which is to block the exhaust input to the valve (If the EGR isn't completely clean, the flapper may not fully seat closed, resulting in exhaust still entering and slowly clogging the valve again). The only work necessary is to unplug the wiring harness that goes to the EGR valve and connect the EGR Emulator into it. This is possible to do entirely from the engine access hatch under the carpet in the back of the car. The EGR Emulator circuit is available to buy fully assembled from some members on this forum, or on eBay. Alternately, you can buy the components and put the circuit together yourself, using the schematics that can be found HERE (Need to actually find the link!) From the original thread: http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?showtopic=10247&page=1 (Need some actual instructions and pictures) 2) EGR Blocking Plate This method requires a bit more effort to achieve, and requires removal of the back panels of the car. Essentially, you disconnect the exhaust line that leads to the EGR valve, insert a solid plate in between the valve and the line, then reconnect everything. This way, no exhaust can enter the mixing chamber, and there is no way it can become clogged again. In this case, the flapper inside the EGR valve continues to move as it normally would, and as such, if the valve is clogged, it will need to be cleaned out. This is essentially a fully preventative measure, rather than a cure itself. (Someone please document how to actually get in to insert the block plate! Pictures too if possible!) (Leave this in towards end, small additional tip to the main body) Many of the EGR pipe flanges have distorted, causing an exhaust leak. Not enough to lose power, but an annoying "whistling fart" noise and a lot of soot in the vicinity. Filing/sanding the ears of the blocking plate is an excellent idea. Fit by feel is best, hard to precisely define how much to remove. Look the mounting holes and the centre port with the circular seal area, also the metal gasket has a definite formed bead that is the seal point: start the taper about 1/4 of the seal diameter in, so the centre half is left flat then starts to thin. Remove about 15 to 20 thousandths of an inch (a scant whisker) at the outside of the ear, smooth taper out. With the bolts slightly loose you should be able to feel a slight amount of rocking motion. 3) Full EGR Delete This is the most in-depth method, and combines the first two methods, along with some extra work. Doing this will guarantee that your EGR will never clog again! This method involves entirely removing the EGR valve, replacing it with a straight piece of pipe, blocking off the exhaust line (so that it isn't just shooting exhaust into the engine compartment), then emulating the EGR so that the computer doesn't care that it is gone. There's probably more to it too... http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?/topic/30985-full-egr-delete/

(Not the one on West side of Guelph Ln) Diagnostic (Scan tool does 90% what STAR can) Servicing, Alignment, Best Price Work done by fellow smart owner and member (Bessy aka Andrew). .......... https://www.yelp.com/biz/active-green-and-ross-tire-and-auto-centre-burlington

Troy used to work as a mechanic for a MB dealer, and is of course very knowledgeable about smart cars Assets: Reasonable rates and a friendly, customer-focused approach.

I've restored the moderation powers (It seems that mod powers don't get inherited from secondary groups anymore?), so that's step 1. Step 2 will be to find investigate the posting permissions issue in that forum.

Added a plugin to show post numbers again

Sure, I can elaborate on it. If you go to your own profile page, you'll see a list of your posts. Right above that, there's a text box that says "What's on your mind?" in which you can type a "Status Update". That gets posted on your own page. If you go to someone elses profile page, you'll see in the same spot a text box that says "Leave a message on <member>'s feed". Those messages that are on someone elses feed are the ones that appear to be directed at someone. The one in your original picture is a post that Ritchie made on GRP151's feed. Side note: For some reason I don't seem to see that "Leave a message on Cadillacman's feed" on your profile page, and I suspect that means that you don't see the "What's on your mind?" box either. Everyone elses profile that I've looked at has had that box. Probably some weird permissions thing that I can look into. EDIT: Went looking to figure it out, and either you disabled status updates on the previous version of the site, or some other setting got converted into this one in the upgrade. Slightly relieved to find it isn't some weird group permission interaction

Interestingly, there used to be an actual "Help" feature with a set of guides that outlined all of the functionality of the software suite, but it seems to be missing in this version. You can also disregard the snapshot I posted above now, as I've already rejigged the menu a bit to make the main features show on the top level of the menu.

If you hover over the "Browse" tab at the top of the page, you'll see most of the options that were at the top of the old site. Perhaps what should change is all of the options that are currently underneath "Browse" should be moved up to the top level, such that they sit alongside the current "Activity" tab. Some general fiddling with the top of the site menu might be in order. EDIT: If you're visiting on mobile, it'll obviously look a bit different, but you should see the same categories if you click on the hamburger menu at the top right of the page (3 horizontal lines in the top right)

From a site user perspective, the site was "broke", in that some links from search engines were being hijacked and users were being taken to a different site, where they could have gotten a virus. From a webmaster's perspective, the site was "broke" in that there were security holes in the software allowing hackers to gain access to the site storage, allowing said hijacking attempts to be allowed, personal data (such as email addresses and hashed passwords) to be potentially extracted, and server resources being used on who knows what (spam emailing potentially) From a software developers perspective, the software was "broke in that it had been based on more than 10 years of code, which means they're constantly working around design mistakes they made when they still didn't know what they were doing. The software had to be rewritten from scratch to become more efficient and to allow for better features to be developed over the next 10 or more years. I realize that anytime something changes on a website people will say "Why did it need to change", but software updates are inevitable, and things need to change to address new features, fix bugs, etc. On a major update like this, things take time to get everything back in order. In order to speed up that process, it's always best if users can provide some assistance of their own, by trying to provide constructive feedback that I can actually use to make the site more usable again. Simply saying "It sucks now!" doesn't help me do that. While Cadillacman's comments are showing frustration, he is also pointing out specific things that I can look at and try to improve. (PS: Regarding the stupid new line vs paragraph thing - There is a toggle switch to switch between them, but it doesn't seem to actually change anything, and we're still left with the huge gaps when you hit enter. Still investigating.)

I noticed the large gaps between paragraphs as well while making my last post (some huge gaps there!). Since this version of the board actually uses CKEditor for creating new posts, I imagine it shouldn't be impossible to get that corrected. Still investigating getting topics to show rather than posts in the activity stream though. As an aside, I will mention that FINALLY this version has addressed my desire for the activity stream (formerly "view new content") and the search functionality actually show ALL content across the site, meaning that a search will finally show results from the Wiki mixed in with results from the forum, and an edit to a wiki page will show up in unread content...

Follow-up: I got an email from Google saying that they've given us the all clear, so they won't be delivering any warnings. Different browsers use different sources for determining whether or not they'll serve up a "malicious site" warning, but at least that's one source down.

Yeah, now that we're getting some activity again wit the new version, I think you're right, the "all activity" stream does look a bit too verbose. Try giving the "Condensed" version a shot (There's a little toggle at the top right of the activity stream), and see what you think. Condensed is still showing one item per post, but since it doesn't show the actual content of the post, I think it looks a bit better (And I think I'll probably change that to be the default). The red item is a comment on someone's "status" (Basically a public message on the user's profile), and that probably doesn't need to show up on this "All activity" stream either (Nor do new members, in my opinion). I can tweak the streams in all sorts of ways to change what shows up by default (And actually, I think there's a way members can make their own custom streams too?), as well as making different streams available to different member groups (eg. people who aren't signed in).

As Mike said, the upgrade should have cut off any of the major security holes that were lingering, and should have cleared out the hijacking issues. I've sent a request for the site to be rescanned, which means the warning should be gone within 72 hours. I realize that with the upgrade some things need to be relearned, but this version isn't too wildly different from the old. It's unfortunate that there had to be 2 major leaps in versions so soon, but this version took a lot longer to be released than they had originally said, and there were many issues when it was first launched. This version brings a lot of benefits too, which may help us out somewhat (for one, it is much more usable on a phone now).

Hi all, It's been a while since I've last been on here, but I've been kicking around and occasionally keeping an eye on here. I've been trying to fire fight the link hijacking issues that are popping up, but I think there are just too many security holes in this version of the forum software to keep them at bay. As such, I'll be putting the site into "Maintenance Mode" later today so that I can upgrade the site to Invision Power Board 4. I've been holding off on doing this upgrade as it's a full rewrite of the forum software, and as such, there will be some differences to the current experience, and there will no doubt be some issues in the upgrade. That being said, I'm sure you'll learn to adjust to the new version quickly, and be able to take advantage of some of the new features! I'll leave you with that for now, and if there are questions, feel free to ask them. This post has been promoted to an article

It'll take some time for the site to be re-evaluated, then it should go away. Not entirely sure how long though.

It should. That was a malicious piece of code that was being injected into the site through a backdoor in the old version of the forum software. Definitely keep an eye out for it still, but I'm 99.9999999% certain it should stop that one.

The site is now back up in its most basic form, on the new version of Invision Power Suite. I'll be working to restore full functionality over the course of the weekend.

Hi all, It's been a while since I've last been on here, but I've been kicking around and occasionally keeping an eye on here. I've been trying to fire fight the link hijacking issues that are popping up, but I think there are just too many security holes in this version of the forum software to keep them at bay. As such, I'll be putting the site into "Maintenance Mode" later today so that I can upgrade the site to Invision Power Board 4. I've been holding off on doing this upgrade as it's a full rewrite of the forum software, and as such, there will be some differences to the current experience, and there will no doubt be some issues in the upgrade. That being said, I'm sure you'll learn to adjust to the new version quickly, and be able to take advantage of some of the new features! I'll leave you with that for now, and if there are questions, feel free to ask them.

So my exhaust is pretty much totally bojangled now. The bottom edge rusted out, then was welded back together. Shortly there after, it has started sounding super rattly, so I assume the cat has broken loose inside now. Adding insult to all of that, the exhaust strap has snapped, and I believe the downpipe has cracked, resulting in a nice squeaky noise. With all of that in mind, I think I'm in the market for a new exhaust. Reading around shows the OEM exhaust is about $600, plus tax. From what I've seen in my digging around, I should be able to throw together a custom exhaust for probably less than half of that. However, I'm a total noob. My understanding is that to reduce soot, you use a cat (Although it sounds like some people aren't putting them in custom exhausts? To reduce cost, or maybe backpressure?). Obviously you want something to muffle sound too. My understanding is that other than pipes, that's pretty much all you need. My goal would be to have an exhaust system that 1) doesn't make horrible rattling sounds, 2) Is easy on the wallet (Let's set the limit at $300 for parts), 3) is relatively legal in terms of emissions, 4) doesn't shatter your eardrums. let's get down to business: In THIS thread, Bil says that (At least at the time), the MagnaFlow 53003D was a universal diesel cat that he had used. I see I can get it with free shipping from Toronto from HERE for $76.96 CAD. Seems like a pretty good price. Is it? Or are there better options for the price? In that same thread, Bil says that just having the cat without any muffling resulted in a pretty loud exhaust. In terms of muffling the sound, what do you actually do? I saw in another thread mention of thrush glass, which I think is the cheap and easy way to do muffling. What should I be looking at for muffling? How much does that cost? What's the best way to do this, vs. the cheap way? In the thread I linked above, it appeared that Bil used a flexpipe to connect to the engine itself. I know the angle is weird coming out, so is that the best/easiest/cheapest way to get everything connected? It looks like they cost about $40? Then obviously there is the bling factor of the exhaust tip. Just for show I think I can figure that one out. Assembly: I am assuming exhaust bits need to be welded together, or can they be clamped somehow? And in terms of layout, it would basically be: Engine->Flex pipe->Cat->Muffler->exhaust tip And that the cat and muffler should be attached right to each other? And in terms of fixing this all in place, do you think I'd be able to use the existing exhaust hanger(s?)? What obvious bits have I missed? What am I not considering?

Hey everybody, I was playing around with lasers and acid and stuff tonight, and decided to take some pictures. I thought this might be sort of interesting to some of you. Let me back up a bit. I made a batch of EGR emulators a while back for someone, using plain old perfboard (this stuff) and through hole components (Like these). While these worked, they were big, bulky, and took a good amount of time to make. All that in mind, I decided to make my own circuit boards, so that I can use little surface mount components (Like these!) I started by grabbing the latest iteration of the EGR emulator circuit by smartdriver (from here) This is all well and good, but isn't particularly usable in it's current state. With that in mind, I headed over to Digikey and found suitable components to be used in the circuit and ordered them. At this point, I knew the size of the components being used. With that info, I used a circuit layout tool called EAGLE to make the circuit below: Then I hid some of the layers to make this, which is just the bits that we want to actually show up on the circuit board: Now, this is where things start getting fun I grabbed some copper clad board from my stash: Then I cut a 2" strip off of one end (Since this was really just an experiment). I then spraypainted the copper side of the board (Black, although it doesn't really matter). Once the spraypaint was dry, I chucked the now black copper board into my laser cutter/etcher (A 40W CO2 laser, in case you were curious). I used it to etch the black and white inverted image of my circuit from above into the spraypaint, leaving spraypaint only where I wanted my copper lines to be: (Action shot!) Once that was done, I was left with a strip of copper board, with five spraypaint circuits on it. I mentioned acid before, right? This is the part where we start playing with extra dangerous stuff I pulled out my container of Ferric Chloride (Attainable at your nearest quality electronics shop), and got the bubbler going in it (Not just for show!) As it happens, ferric chloride eats (etches) away at copper, but not spray paint (Which makes it an "etch resist"). The bubbler helps this process by keeping the liquid moving, and getting fresh acid in contact with the copper. I threw the copper board into the jug o' acid, and waited. and waited. and waited. The process should only really take 20-30 minutes, but my acid isn't particularly fresh, and has been used a bunch of times before this, so it's slower. Also, it wasn't particularly warm in the basement where I was doing the etching (Heat speeds the process). In the end, it took about 1hr, 10 minutes to etch the exposed copper off of the boards. Once that was done, a quick rubdown of the boards with acetone removed the spray paint, and I was left with this: For scale, each of those etched out circuits is about 1" x 1". The components that go on the board are absolutely miniscule. That's really as far as I got tonight, but it seems like good progress. All that needs to be done after this is to drill a few holes for the wires to connect to the EGR harness, and soldering on the components. That's a job for tomorrow with a magnifier! Hope it was interesting!

OK, the "Clicking the Google link takes me to another site" was the clue that I needed! Found the malicious code that was doing that and removed it. Requested a recheck from Yandex, and we'll see how it turns out.

I probably wouldn't be too concerned about the front end accident, personally I'd be more afraid of what fluids ended up where with the tipping incident, and what was actually repaired for that $5000. I would probably stay away from it, myself.

Yeah, sure. It's only about 10 minutes away from me, so it'd be a fun Saturday morning activity.

It does seem strangely cheap. I could probably be easily tempted to go check it out tomorrow for you (at least from a basic operational standpoint) if you were interested.

This thread has a bunch of pictures and recommendations for an actual coolant heater. Installation is far more involved than an oil pan heater, but everything I've heard is that it is infinitely more effective.