1999 Toyota Corolla emissions fail

Bbdoyle

My 1999 Toyota Corolla has failed on emissions for first time ever, I've had it for 10yrs & only 79000 on the clock. The first fail emissions were only just over so my mechanic gave it a service but it failed on the retest (emissions were the same) He replaced the Catalytic Convertor with a reconditioned one from another Corolla which had recently passed the test but emissions soared at 6.7 on last retest 😢
He has since replaced the lambda sensor with a new one 2wks ago. Car is driving great but a strong smell of exhaust fumes. I don't want to rebook another test until this is sorted & I'm thinking my own Catalytic Convertor was better than the replacement with the new lambda sensor. Any suggestions would be grateful as between the Mechanic & the NCT tests I've spent over €600!

biko

Can you be more specific as to what it reads on the fail sheet?

selectamatic

Is the car getting to full operating temperature? Common enough for thermostats to cause the car to run rich if they're stuck open.

Also the throttle body can give bother on corolla's of that age, at what rpm did it take the low idle test.

Leonard Hofstadter

Can you post up all the emissions readings?

We can't really help you until we've got all the data.

The fact that there's a strong smell of exhaust fumes suggests there is an exhaust leak and that is very likely to be the cause of the emissions failure.