Until I did all that crap, it failed one of the three criteria for passing the inspection. I saw exactly what the scanner said.
That same car had a problem with one of the computers followed by a Pass/Lock system failure. It happened right near the end of warranty. When we calleed Pontiac and asked them to extend the warranty for a couple of extra months to make sure it wasn't a domino effect, they refused. We didn't want money or Lemon Law stuff, just a little assurance it wasn't going to cost a fortune to keep the car. Do you think my son will be buying another Pontiac any too soon?
You engine controls engineers need to design something that doesn't make you go through this bull crap! The procedure was printed off one of those expensive services repair places now have to subscribe to.

 

Understand that OBDII is a government thing. It is all about emissions, period.

 

I don't know about the cops showing up, but the emissions inspection does indeed work that way.

On OBDII vehicles (1996-up) some states do not require a dyno test anymore. Instead the PCM (powertrain control module) is hooked up to the machine at the station which in turn is linked to a central server in the state. Here in Dallas, all the machines link to a server in Austin.

The PCM has a number of mandated diagnostics and the state of the diagnostics is what is reported to the emisisons machine. Diagnostics can be stuff like "EGR functioning", "O2 sensor OK" etc. As I said, there's a bunch of them. The state can be one of three states: PASS, FAIL and NOT READY. NOT READY means the diagnostic has not run yet.

When you clear the codes or disconnect the battery all diagnostics are reset to NOT READY. If you hook it up to an emissions machine at that time it WILL FAIL. You are only allowed to have a small number (2 or 3) diagnostics in a NOT READY state. None can be FAIL.

That's why the manual gave the drive cycle instructions. It gives the fastest way to get a wide enough range of driving situations where all the diagnostics will run. Some diagnostics only run in certain situations, for instance the EGR diagnostics requires steady speed for a few minutes. In city driving it may NEVER run.

I remember there were some Volvos where the requirements for some diagnostics were so tight that you couldn't make 3 or 4 diagnostics run no matter what. The states had to exempt those Volvos from the OBDII testing and run them on the emissions dyno like the older cars.

Hope this clarifies a little.

Monster5601: A few years ago I spent a day with a GM powertrain engineer. cool guy. He told me how I could convert my Camaro's EGR system into hidden nitrous.

 

That may be true, but the hidden bonus is that your Big Brother knows all about you and your vehicle. OnStar just makes it that much worse.
I was lucky that I live near a parkway that has a not so busy end near me. Imagine jumping through all those hoops in traffic! Go 55, 20 and down to zero on an average road and see where you get. I was also lucky in that I know the guy and he let me do this to initiate the computer again. I screwed around driving around back and forth for almost 2 hours. If he did it at $65/hr, that's a nice chunk of change to pass an inspection on a car that really didn't have anything wrong with it.
BTW Monster, I live in Rochester and go by Delphi every day on my way to work. How long before the engine management and fuel delivery systems are shipped off to Mexico with everything else?

 

I don't see powertrain control leaving Michigan let alone heading to Mexico. It is the olny thing left that makes each manufacture unique. All of Delphi's PCMs are manufactured in Milwaukee.

 

Is it April 1st?

 

Seems to me that to slow to zero without braking would be kind of hard as my car moves forward when in drive an no gas or brake applied, mayve we should re-write the procedure to include accelerate to 80 without pressing the gas pedal. Just my 2 cents