Cruising Will Never be the Same

[adorshki]

So they are getting rid of AM radio, but keeping the stupid "Check Engine" light?

walrus

Nobody ever pays attention to that anyway.

 

[walrus]

Nobody ever pays attention to that anyway.

Exactly!

walrus

 

[dwasifar]

walrus,
Whenever that "check engine" light comes on, I lift the hood and check, and so far, the engine is always there, right where it's supposed to be.
Shouldn't the light come on if the engine is missing?
I'm confused.
RBSinTo

You have to realize that the markings on the dash lights are very condensed for space. If you look carefully, with a magnifier, you can see the full phrase, which is: "Write a big CHECK to fix your ENGINE."

 

[dwasifar]

On a related note:

 

[adorshki]

On a related note:

Kinda small, took me a minute!

 

[davismanLV]

Nobody ever pays attention to that anyway.

They do when you get it smog checked. They'll charge you and fail you. Then you have to come back once you've fixed whatever the problem is. In CA they used to do smog checks every other year. Here in NV it's EVERY year. Gotta get mine done tomorrow. Ugh!!

 

[walrus]

Full inspection every year in MA, too. Can you spell "s c a m"?

walrus

 

[fronobulax]

Full inspection every year in MA, too. Can you spell "s c a m"?

walrus

To continue the veer and hope it doesn't skirt too close to politics, annual emission inspections of vehicles registered in certain parts of Northern Virginia were required by the Federal Government as part of an effort to reduce air pollution. It seems to have worked. One of the neat things is that they developed technology that was trusted that measure the bad stuff in tailpipe admissions from a moving car and snapped a photo of the license plate. If the car passed and the sample date was close enough to when the inspection was due you got a notice that your car had passed and you did not have to take it in to a shop just to have it tested. I think you were still charged an inspection fee though.

Virginia has mandatory annual safety inspections but the status of the Check Engine light is not a factor.

Virginia and Maryland often play "anything you do, I can do better" so one has annual safety inspections and the other has a one time inspection at registration (or at least that was the case for Maryland the last time I was subjected to a lot of editorials about changing it, or not). But "scam" was never used as an argument for or against. It pretty much came down to economics - what was an acceptable financial burden to impose on an individual in order in order to improve safety for everyone on public roads.

 

[GAD]

Here in NJ the pulled back almost all manual inspections and now they hook up to your car’s computer and pull data from there.

 

[fronobulax]

Here in NJ the pulled back almost all manual inspections and now they hook up to your car’s computer and pull data from there.

Wouldn't be especially effective here. Lots of vehicles legally on the road that don't have enough computerization to have the data.

 

[adorshki]

They do when you get it smog checked. They'll charge you and fail you. Then you have to come back once you've fixed whatever the problem is. In CA they used to do smog checks every other year. Here in NV it's EVERY year. Gotta get mine done tomorrow. Ugh!!

Uh-uh. They can't even test unless the CEL light is clear. Not in CA, anyway.

No point, engine's already indicating it's "Not Ready". That's why you have to do a monitor reset drive after repairs or re-set.

One loophole in CA: For some reason in CA in 2015 the CARB issued a singular exception to the CEL On/Not testable rule: If the code is due to an evaporative recovery system leak. Apparently they're aware of something that generates false positives (I wonder if it's the federal 15% ethanol standard? Ethanol would evaporate more readily than gas.)

Anyway, if that's the ONLY code activating the CEL the car can be tested and will pass if all the other tests are successful.
I actually ran into that with the '07 Mercury. Now the problem becomes finding a shop that'll work with you on that. All it really meant is throwing a code reader on there to verify it's the only code. Most of 'em aren't aware of it, but it's up on the web.

Your state may vary.

One other thing CA does is authorize "Test only" stations, where you can get your car tested but they cannot perform repairs, to eliminate possible conflict of interest regarding repairs.

I have an Autel code reader, cost $35.00 about 5 years ago, very basic, but it lets me know where my problem is, and whether a mechanic's trying to feed me some BS or not. And btw I've only run into 2 unethical mechanics in my life, and one was at a BMW dealer.

 

[walrus]

To continue the veer and hope it doesn't skirt too close to politics, annual emission inspections of vehicles registered in certain parts of Northern Virginia were required by the Federal Government as part of an effort to reduce air pollution. It seems to have worked. One of the neat things is that they developed technology that was trusted that measure the bad stuff in tailpipe admissions from a moving car and snapped a photo of the license plate. If the car passed and the sample date was close enough to when the inspection was due you got a notice that your car had passed and you did not have to take it in to a shop just to have it tested. I think you were still charged an inspection fee though.

Virginia has mandatory annual safety inspections but the status of the Check Engine light is not a factor.

Virginia and Maryland often play "anything you do, I can do better" so one has annual safety inspections and the other has a one time inspection at registration (or at least that was the case for Maryland the last time I was subjected to a lot of editorials about changing it, or not). But "scam" was never used as an argument for or against. It pretty much came down to economics - what was an acceptable financial burden to impose on an individual in order in order to improve safety for everyone on public roads.

I could see annual inspections for cars of a certain age. But we just bought a new car, and there's no way it needs an inspection every year. It had to be inspected right after we bought it (within one week). They inspect the wipers, the headlights, etc., not just emissions. Her car had less than 10K on it for the first annual inspection (but second overall). Sorry, IMO, that's not necessary.

And don't get me going about excise tax. As a life long resident of Taxachusetts, I know a scam when I see one. YMMV.

walrus

 

[adorshki]

I could see annual inspections for cars of a certain age. But we just bought a new car, and there's no way it needs an inspection every year. It had to be inspected right after we bought it (within one week). They inspect the wipers, the headlights, etc., not just emissions. Her car had less than 10K on it for the first annual inspection (but second overall). Sorry, IMO, that's not necessary.

And don't get me going about excise tax. As a life long resident of Taxachusetts, I know a scam when I see one. YMMV.

walrus

Possibly to discourage continued use of vehicles with unrepaired damage that are safety hazards?

Wouldn't be especially effective here. Lots of vehicles legally on the road that don't have enough computerization to have the data.

Any car with OBD-II can be tested that way, it's been implemented since '93. So my last 4 or 5 tests starting with the Milan, were all performed by plugging into the OBD port of my idling car.

It's actually a much bigger hassle to test pre-OBD cars than "computerized" cars now.

 

[fronobulax]

Any car with OBD-II can be tested that way, it's been implemented since '93. So my last 4 or 5 tests starting with the Milan, were all performed by plugging into the OBD port of my idling car.

I've never seen a mechanic plug into an OBD-II port on my car or tell me information they gleaned from it. But according to the internet the port is there so the problem is my ignorance. Thanks.

Emissions inspections in Virginia involve sticking a probe up the tail pipe. That's an image we don't need to discuss. The existence of the on-road testing system suggests data from an OBD-II port is not needed to pass.

 

[GAD]

I've never seen a mechanic plug into an OBD-II port on my car or tell me information they gleaned from it. But according to the internet the port is there so the problem is my ignorance. Thanks.

Emissions inspections in Virginia involve sticking a probe up the tail pipe. That's an image we don't need to discuss. The existence of the on-road testing system suggests data from an OBD-II port is not needed to pass.

The used to probe the tailpipes here, too. Inspection in NJ used to be an awful process. You’d wait in line for hours and then it would take 45 minutes for them to inspect every little stupid thing. Now it’s the scanner, maybe check if your lights work and you’re outta there. It’s glorious compared to the old ways. Plus now we only inspect every two years. A brand new car is four years.

 

[davismanLV]

Yeah, here we used to do the OBD-2 port AND shove a probe up your tailpipe (sorry) but now it's just plug in and done. Not sure why that changed but, yeah.

 

[fronobulax]

To be clear - Virginia has two separate and independent inspections. The safety inspection is annual. The emissions inspection is every two years if the car is garaged in certain areas. The safety inspection pretty much avoids the tail pipe as long as there are no visible holes and it does not take advantage of the a computer. The mechanics are required to do things like pull a tire and inspect the brakes, inspect the wipers, verify that all lights and signals work etc. It could be argued that VA law could be updated if car sensors were trusted to record and monitor the right things.

 

[GAD]

To be clear - Virginia has two separate and independent inspections. The safety inspection is annual. The emissions inspection is every two years if the car is garaged in certain areas. The safety inspection pretty much avoids the tail pipe as long as there are no visible holes and it does not take advantage of the a computer. The mechanics are required to do things like pull a tire and inspect the brakes, inspect the wipers, verify that all lights and signals work etc. It could be argued that VA law could be updated if car sensors were trusted to record and monitor the right things.

Pull a tire! Holy crap!

 

[davismanLV]

To be clear - Virginia has two separate and independent inspections. The safety inspection is annual. The emissions inspection is every two years if the car is garaged in certain areas. The safety inspection pretty much avoids the tail pipe as long as there are no visible holes and it does not take advantage of the a computer. The mechanics are required to do things like pull a tire and inspect the brakes, inspect the wipers, verify that all lights and signals work etc. It could be argued that VA law could be updated if car sensors were trusted to record and monitor the right things.

Seems kind of invasive, but okay. Two different things. Only emissions here in NV.

 

[adorshki]

To be clear - Virginia has two separate and independent inspections. The safety inspection is annual. The emissions inspection is every two years if the car is garaged in certain areas. The safety inspection pretty much avoids the tail pipe as long as there are no visible holes and it does not take advantage of the a computer. The mechanics are required to do things like pull a tire and inspect the brakes, inspect the wipers, verify that all lights and signals work etc. It could be argued that VA law could be updated if car sensors were trusted to record and monitor the right things.

I get that. I get a little nervous about the state of cars around me sometimes, as there isn't a regular safety inspection in CA, only equipment violation enforcement. One reason I prefer to keep a lot of distance round me whenever possible, besides better pothole visibility.

With OBDII the need to check the actual tailpipe emissions is obviated because the data is stored in the vehicle's ECU, it's what causes the CEL to activate if an error repeats a certain number of times. O2 sensors indicate how rich or lean the exhaust is and the ECU uses that info to adjust fuel flow and spark timing, for example.

OBDII is just a standard for classifying error codes, and the interface to read the ECU's stored codes. Some codes (primarily emissions related) are universal among makes, but some makes can collect data that generates make-specific codes. (BMW's kinda notorious for this). So it was intended to be an evolving "platform".

Oh yeah, re on-road testing: I did see something to that effect going on Southern CA recently, one method involved pull-overs with driver consent to test, a pass gave 'em a next-test exemption (saves money). Seems I saw something about polarized chromatic reading of the exhaust gases by video as well? Which allowed the "drive-by" testing.

I think a simplifying issue might be that such a majority of vehicles are in fact clean runners today, and potential aged polluters can be more readily singled out. There's already a system in place whereby cars over a certain age have to be tested at a "Test Only" station every other smog check.