Smog checks are easy

Time to renew the registration. I drove the car up to K&L Wines to pick up a bottle of 26 year old bourbon, not sure what the occasion will be yet. On the way home I stopped at the gas station on the corner by my house for a quick smog. Yep, the corner gas station. As usual I backed it in and did the driving (rolling road), the tester wasn't sure how to drive the car. Passed and done in no time.

I have had the car for 8 years and it has never been a problem. It is a euro and I live in CA but as you can see, a well adjusted car passes smog and has a LOT of room to spare. I am flying along at less than 10% of the allowed emissions.
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Good for you!!!

Keep driving...Maybe THAT'S what keeps the smog levels down!!!

 

Cool story...fwiw, not too many cars fail the emissions test...it's usually the codes ODBC issue iirc.

 

True but that is because people think that it is a PC and keep power cycling the thing. Pretty sure way to make all of your monitors not ready. I forgot to turn off ASR to begin with and set the ABS light. Good news is that doesn't impact the emissions or readiness tests. The ABS reset as soon as I left the station.

 

SHOW OFF !!!

And my 360 passed this year just as easily as yours and it was super clean also.

Last time it was my ODBII monitors that caused failure, over and over again, I was not power cycling my battery since I NEVER lets repeat that NEVER shut off the battery, but I needed my ECU's reflashed by FNA, now its seem to be good to go.

 

Gotta love tainting the car's history with FAILED emissions due to the stupid readiness codes. Thank you CA! Who cares if what comes out of the exhaust is cleaner than most other cars

 

As I recall you have a 99 and it was a trial to get right. Now that you have it fixed up you should be good to go.

 

Does this problem still exist for 2000 and later car? Euro version the same? Only way to reset is to do the drive cycles?

Sorry this is coming up for me on my 2001 euro car - taking a deep breath

 

What problem ? if you mean the monitors not being ready no matter how many thousands of miles you put on the car, that is only a 1999 issue and FNA has a fix, its a cheap reflash and good to go.

If you mean turning off the battery ? then yes, no matter what year you have, if you turn off the battery then you will have to do a drive cycle to reset the monitors.

And yes, my car is a 99 and seems to be fine now after the reflash.

 

I did just changed my battery over to a Odessey. So in order to reset everything - I must do the drive cycle to get all the ready code on? Driving many miles will not do the job?

 

depends but some cars can take 200-300 miles. a friends Jag had several monitors triggered after constantly resetting his obd2 codes...had to drive it to the coast & back to reset them.

 

I have about 200 miles on it after battery replacement already. Checked last night and have 2 no ready - Cat and Secondary air or something like that. Do I have to cycle the power to do the drive cycle or just follow the procedure and go from there? Pretty hard to find a stretch of road in San Jose to carry this out...

Also the OBDII connector campaign - if it was not done, we would not be able to get everything to scan or read right?

 

The ODBII campaign is easy to do, you can do it yourself. If your reader is getting readings, its fine. The campaign as I understand it was because some readers would not work.

Since your car is not a 99, the monitors will eventually kick in, you do not have cycle the battery but you do have to follow the drive procedure pretty closely OR drive lots of miles in different situations, its not just freeway miles, you have to have cold start slow speed, freeway and idle times, basically normal every day driving and they will kick in eventually.

 

Perfect - so it is an accumulative thing and not a fix sequence and distance... More reasons to drive the car - blessing in disguise

Thank you

 

Exactly. Each sets in specific conditions. The drive cycle is sequenced to get you to the conditions in a short of a time as possible so you can get everything set.

The campaign just grounds the ground pin. Ferrari left it unconnected so many readers, including the referee station, won't read the OBD.

 

Drive cycle did not work for me. Still have Cat and Evap flashing. Just have to knock one more out to get it to smog. I drove another 50+miles today in city and highway with same results. Anything else I can try?

 

sorry to hear that, I know for me I had several thousand miles and it still did not come on BUT there was a reason for it not working on my car and that was the ecu needing reflash which is not the case on your car.

So for the Evap, I have heard make sure the tank has about 5/8's of a tank gas in it, last smog I filled up and went for a drive until I had less than 3/4's of a tank and my evap was off. Not sure if that is a myth or true but it seemed to help get my evap off.

 

Evap could be a leaking rollover valve, bad gas cap, lots of things that are pretty well known. That is probably a real code. Cat I am not sure. I am not any where near an expert but I can think of a few things, none of them good. You may want to have someone who knows these cars well take a look.

 

First of all - thank you all for the comments and feedback!

The car is new to me (my first F car). The only code I got several months back was bank 2 O2 sensor went out in me. Replaced and CEL went away. Car has been running really well without throwing any code. Battery went dead on me and I replaced it with an Odessey PC925 like some here on the board. Saw this post and got me concern as my smog is coming up soon...

Shouldn't any leak throw a code? I have been looking thru the system and notice one fuel injection rail was missing a cap - maybe leak was small enough to throw the system off but not a code? Anyway - will look for replacement today and check on gas cap again. There is absolutely no gas smell or anything like that on the car so roll over valve should be OK base on other's finding.

BTW - any recommendation for shop near San Jose area?