Evidently since the new "OBDII only" smog check program in CA started up in 2015, there have been many vehicles failing due to more than one monitor showing incomplete despite no faults or DTC, and owners driving all the "drive cycles" and in many cases hundreds of miles.


2000 and newer vehicles are allowed only the EVAP as incomplete, any other monitors showing incomplete including Comprehensive Component will cause a FAIL for your smog test.


A sort of "catch 22" is that with Jaguars, evidently the Comprehensive won't show as complete even if the only test not completed is the Evap (large and small leak), so essentially the allowed pass for Evap incomplete is apparently useless for us.


As an acknowledgement of the problem of incomplete readiness monitors, California now has a method for getting cleared for registration as follows:


You need a copy of the failed smog test with the incomplete tests shown, then also a copy of a service report showing no faults found with emission related components. You can FAX, mail, or email (scan documents into a pdf). Email to INFO@asktheref.org with a subject title of BAR Referee Program. Include your name and telephone number. You will be contacted and then issued a registration renewal. If you want to use mail or FAX then go to www.asktheref.org for more info and/or call the number shown there. If you call in and explain that you are failing smog due to incomplete monitors they will immediately know how to help (no longer need to schedule a referee appointment and in fact they don't want you to do that for this known problem).


Hope this helps for CA folks stuck in "not completed" limbo.

 

Thank you very much for your idea. Unfortunately I'm located in Texas. Who knew the state with the reputation for personal freedoms versus government intervention would have the same problems. This is the first time I have needed an inspection to get my registration. It's a new law. Therefore, if my monitors don't reset in the next 24 hours I have the choice of breaking the law or scrapping my car. That's after spending $2323 on repairs. Also my mileage is up to around 250 miles and I still have 3 incomplete monitors. I guess I should spend the rest of the night trying to get them to reset. Somehow, I don't think that's in the best interest of our air quality. Ok enough of my b....ching.

 

This might help TxDPS - VI Waivers and Time Extensions


I would also add that (in California anyway) the local DMV office manager has the discretion to give you 30 day operating permits for various reasons including "incomplete monitors" and other difficulties related to emission testing. Just show them your problems and don't lie to them and they are pretty good about issuing the permits.

 

densmail - with no car info and not even posting in a forum for a car model it'll be hard for most people to see let alone reply to your post

 

I thought I had posted to the XK8 / XKR forum. I did put my model, year and mileage in my first post.

 

Forum top shows you it's not that forum.

No car info in any of your posts in the thread... (look and see)

 

I see what you mean. Somehow I ended up posting in two threads. I think my original post was in the XK8 forum and it definitely had my car info. Sorry for the mix up and thanks for the help.

 

I moved out of LA in 1989 my wife worked in the towers in la you could see the amber haze from her office window . it seems that things have not got any better. i don't mis the every year rip off called a smog check . even back then it cost 4-5 hundred to get threw .i hope all works out with gov moon beam. o doe's his uncle still own the knox device co ? it worked well { make your car spark nock good } i admit i realy do miss the food would love a bobs big boy or a tommys mud slide. all the best Dan L .

 

All depends on whether many deaths and much suffering counts in your opinion.

 

I grew up in So Cal. Back in the 70s the smog was so bad that the air was brown and it hurt to breathe during the summer. The air is way better now than it was then, something is working.

I hate the bi annual smog checks as much as the next guy. Not so much that we have to have them, but because of the bureaucracy involved. It's not enough that your car passes the tailpipe test, it also has to pass the visual and gas cap and on and on. But, it beats brown air.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Agreed but the tests have not kept up with the times. The gas cap and tailpipe test are redundant on OBDII equipped vehicles.

Hopefully both vehicle technology and government regulations will evolve to a situation where no special visits to a test station will be required to pass smog regs and no unsuspecting owner will be surprised if his car fails.

It would be simple enough to configure the vehicles to transmit an encoded 'all OK' signal that could be read at designated spots like gas stations, toll booths, traffic lights or captured on a smart phone for later transmission. Yes, I know- 'big brother'.

As long as there is at least one positive result captured from each vehicle per annum or whatever time period, there is no further need to report for special testing.

Conversely, the cars could be a little more user friendly than today by issuing messages such as 'not ready for testing' which presently represents the majority of failures at testing station.

 

Just a helpful FYI before you get jumped again..

Go To; 'User CP' (just above in black bar)

Under 'Settings and Options'

then click on 'Edit Signature '

..enter in your car info so we'll know what you have for future references.

 

I wouldn't be too optimistic.

Very much what was mooted (many years ago) in USA but they backed off precisely because of the big brother issue.

Unless any negatives were reported.

I gather from you that may be the case in Canada or at least that the media there say so. It's not the case anywhere else so far as I can tell and so I wonder if it actually is the case in Canada. I expect no media will have tried to get any meaningful let alone accurate data but instead will trumpet anecdotes.

It doesn't feature among the problems found by interviewing drivers in USA about OBD or among fails at test stations - CARB et al collate faults and issues and it's not among them as one of any size.

Why Canada would be different I don't know. It's most odd if it is. Just the way you test, not to normal OBD ways?

 

First, understand it's not 'Canada', it's the province of Ontario. All of England may use the same rules and laws, but Canada and the US do it province by province or state by state. The stupidity I face each time could be avoided if I lived on the Quebec side of the border where no smog testing exists of any type. No smog testing of any type exists because there's no smog problem caused by vehicles. Neither does Ontario but that's a different discussion.

Not sure which posts you've read, but there's plenty where the owner failed his smog test for having a 'monitors not ready' status. Read the first post in this thread.

EDIT:

I found the actual wording from our government website:

https://www.ontario.ca/page/drive-cl...airs#section-2

"A “not ready” result

Most vehicles with a model year of 1998 or newer have an on-board computer, which records information about emissions related parts and systems as you drive.
Under normal conditions a vehicle should be ‘ready’ and able to communicate whether or not its emissions systems are functioning properly. Only if a vehicle’s on-board computer cannot complete this self-check will it report ‘not ready.’ If the on-board computer is ‘not ready’ it cannot communicate important emissions information.
A vehicle is ‘not ready’ when its on-board computer cannot read the information from the vehicle’s emissions system.
This occurs if your vehicle’s on-board computer has been erased because:

• the battery has recently been disconnected or replaced
• the battery was recently drained (e.g., if the headlights were left on for an extended time)
• the computer codes were cleared or reset to turn off the “Check Engine” light (e.g., if the vehicle has been recently repaired)

If any of the above has recently occurred, you’ll need to get your vehicle “ready” to prepare the vehicle for an emissions test.
Once it’s ”ready”:

• the vehicle can be re-tested

How do I get my vehicle’s computer ready for testing?
‘Readiness’ conditional pass

A vehicle receives a ‘readiness’ conditional pass (deemed still not ready) when it:

• receives 2 ‘not ready’ results and
• no emissions problems have been identified

You get a readiness conditional ‘pass’ to allow you to renew your licence plate sticker.
To qualify:

• at least 24 hours has to pass between each test
• your vehicle must have been driven – at least 30 kms between the tests
• the battery hasn’t been disconnected in the last 30 km of driving
• the on-board diagnostic codes haven’t been cleared (in the last 30 km of driving)
• the number of “not ready” monitors has not increased"

This clearly supports my point that a Jaguar with a P1000 and no other codes would fail and be required to reappear for another test. In the interim, the car must be driven- possibly for no other reason than to create a P1111. What a waste of time and money not to mention the pollution created by driving the minimum 30KMs on top of driving to/from the testing station.

Much 'greener' and more logical to have the car display a 'not ready for e-testing' message advising the owner not to bother going for his initial test.

As mentioned previously and confirmed above, a simple low battery condition can upset the 'monitors ready' status. Low/dead batteries are pretty common here during the winter, easily explaining the increased number of initial test failures during those months.

The fact that the province has no vehicular pollution problem to start with just adds insult to injury.

 

It's not "plenty" in terms of the sheer numbers of cars (I can't speak for just Ontario). There are many tens of thousands of Jaguars. Thousands are on here. Not even 1% of those have readiness (of OBD monitors) problems and it always seem to be due to one or more faults.

It's hard to see why that overall is a bad policy. People should fix faults. Now, if there have been serious attempts and the fault can't be fixed then MAYBE there should be a way to get a temporary pass or something - but that would just be a tiny tweak to a policy.

The media claims about big numbers of vehicles etc are garbage (like most scare stories in the media) or else there's something very very weird about Ontario.

Incidentally, jurisdictions usually define Ready to mean all or most of the OBD monitors are set - most cars do not have an equivalent of jag's P1111. They often allow old cars to have 2 unset monitors. Somewhat less old cars, 1 unset. Newer cars, all must be set. I could not tell what Ontario do.

They also collect data on which cars are proving problematic, if any, and may go back to the maker for recall or the like (Jaguar were forced to do this in USA, for example). Again I do not know what Ontario do. They sound hopeless but maybe they're not.

In case Ontario are indeed clueless I guess you have elections?

 

Relatively few areas have smog testing over here, fewer still use the California or Ontario OBDII measuring system. We've had it for only a few years.

No quarrel there. If there's a genuine fault it should be fixed for all sorts of good reasons. That's not what is being discussed here, it's strictly the case of people showing up for a test but failing due to 'monitors not ready' status.

I can forward you more news articles if you'd like. One of my cars failed due to monitors not ready last winter, simply for low system voltage during cold start. I can give you my indy's phone number and you can chat with him about his frustrations and how much money he loses each time a car needs to come back for a retest. The fees charged don't cover his costs.

Possibly these actions would help you understand that yes, the Ontario system is very weird.


Again since we're only talking about 'monitors not set' the owner and not the car is thought to be the cause of the problem.

Yes, we have elections and unfortunately our shining hope in the most recent election who campaigned very loudly against the testing (see local article)

E-tests to end under Hudak | The Chesterville Record

did not get elected. Instead, the incumbent returned to power. Since they were the ones who just recently introduced they system, it's hardly likely that they will soon admit it's failings.

 

Since I started this thread I think I'll chime in on a couple of points made, and as in many cases I think everyone has a good point to make on the subject of "incomplete monitors"


Regarding how common this is, I will only say that in California according to the BAR rep I spoke to on the phone, the referee stations were no longer taking appointments for this complaint because of the number of cars with this situation, and therefore they instituted the (waiver) program. At our local shop, according to the tech they had two BMW that had to get the "waiver". Our local Jaguar dealer told me they had one "just last week" but I did not ask how often.


Ironically with my XK8 it turned out that I had a bad purge valve which did not throw a code from a short (diode failed) but would not complete EVAP or CAT efficiency. It would throw the code for open circuit (disconnected) but not a short. Once that was replaced everything ran.


So, I would tend to agree that if they are not completing, something is wrong with the car, but with inadequate onboard diagnostics and dealer diagnostic equipment even, you are then left with some potentially very time consuming hit and miss troubleshooting.

 

And that's my point entirely. An average motorist will not know that the monitors are not set (for whatever reason) prior to a test. He is then against the clock hoping that they will reset with additional driving or must start the troubleshooting process if they don't.

It is naive to expect that all owners will purchase a code reader to pre-examine their cars, so why not create OBDII.1 where a 'monitors not ready' message appears on the dash?

 

I think you'll find it's not happening often enough for a change in the actual laws (and if it did it'll not help with current cars). Plus, the cars that are currently most affected are fairly old and have faults that need fixing.

However, if the numbers of them go up and up (pretty big "if") then expect a change.

Till then I guess gradually the word will go around that a $5-10 device can tell you about the readiness and people who can be bothered will just get one. Those who can't be bothered will complain just as they do about every other thing wrong with the world that they again can't be bothered ever to do anything about. Cars are no different for those people.

You never know but even Ontario may help just a teeny bit by putting up signs like "Check your car's Readiness now before it matters" or whatever. Maybe your media might wise up (granted, sounds very very unlikely) and say something similar. Places that work on cars and mechanics may even start to tell their customers - it could happen.

Does Ontario allow any unset monitors on some cars (typically older ones)? Usually geographical areas do. As I posted, a car is commonly Ready if most monitors are set.

 

Hopefully the entire test will be scrapped as a true solution to the flawed process presently used which again, is trying to fix a non-existent smog problem. Our province is over one million square kilometers in area with a population of only 13.6 million, six million of which are in the Toronto area.

Even with that density, Toronto has no smog problem from motor vehicles.

My local indy has started plugging a reader into each car he sees as a courtesy to the customer. I'll ask him next time what % come up with issues.

I've posted 'the rules' above as set by the province. They've made one slight allowance given the large number of 'monitors not ready' failures.

Drive Clean tweaks test process after driver complaints - WHEELS.ca

So, yes a conditional pass can be issued at increased cost but with great inconvenience.

In this article

It's time to cancel Drive Clean program | Toronto Star

The plight of the used car dealers is an excellent recap of the frustration- a high number of failures for monitors not ready, yet not one vehicle actually had a problem once the vehicles was driven long enough to complete. What a total waste.


As a separate issue, Ontario also has unique engine replacement laws that govern older cars, both antique and 'hot rod' as they call them

https://www.ontario.ca/faq/do-hot-ro...ive-clean-test

The old car hobby as a whole is still trying to understand what the rules are trying to say when replacing the engine in a car with anything other than an identical example manufactured the same year.

If the engine in an old Corvette were to die, one could go out and buy a brand new replacement for it from any local Chevrolet dealer albeit in a 350 cu in displacement vs. the 283 or 327 the car might have had when new. They're still in production believe it or not.

One part of the regulations says:

"For Drive Clean testing, the vehicle must meet or exceed what were the emissions standards of the original motor when all original emission control equipment was functioning."

So it seems that the standards in the year of car's manufacture apply.

On the other hand, a following paragraph says:

"All emissions control equipment must be attached and functioning (equipment refers to what came with the replacement motor or be equivalent to what would have come with that motor)"

Could, and has, been interpreted to mean equipment that would have come with the engine in it's year of manufacture, 2016 must be in place and function. Talk about pounding a square peg into a round hole.

The fact that the cars are old enough to be exempt from testing just adds insult to injury. Yes, I know, first world problems.