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hey guys, I keep failing my smog test. (1996 Honda Civic cx) I am moving soon and must resolve this soon or I will lose my car. it's a real bind. i am in a toss up between thinking it's the o2 sensor and catalytic converter, but i do not have the money to shell out to guess randomly. I was going to get an OBD scanner - but my question was, will this even help me? My check engine light does not come on. To be honest, I'm not even sure the light works. Most of that dash is busted. Speedometer, odometer don't work, no dash light...Yeah I know, it's on its last leg, but damn I need this car for emergency medical appointments. It is the only thing I use it for... If it's the O2 sensor, at least the upstream one, i am confident i could do that myself as it's really simple.

Will an OBD scanner be useful here? Is it capable of telling me what's wrong? I know I can get it scanned free at the auto parts shops but sadly I can not go there. I am dealing with some serious health situation, I am immunocompromised and have to refrain from going out in public. Any advice appreciated, thank you.

Here's the scanner I was going to get: it says it works on all 1996 or newer cars, but I just didn't know if it would actually tell me what's wrong. I've never used one.

 
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about the car, I really don't feel it has too many obvious issue to tell me what it might be. It does idle rough sometimes, but I've read that can be a symptom of both a bad o2 sensor and a bad cat... it fails emissions only on the 25 mph test, on NO emissions. last year it was around 650 ppm, just did it again and now it's around 750... god i hope it's not the cat or i am totally boned... i changed the air filter but very little difference in the test...


As a follow up question - should the little clips on the air filter be that difficult to close? I tried to push this thing all around this morning when i changed it but it was still slightly sticking out the edges. I had to really force the clips closed. I do not know if that means i've done it wrong and maybe that could mess things up. i wondered if i should slightly cut around the edge.

 
Rep Power: 222

You can check if there are codes because if the light is broken/removed you would never know. You can buy a Bluetooth dongle on Amazon for like $20 and then pay $5 for the torque app