I feel for you guys out there. Hard to enjoy a performance car with the govt on your back!

 

john..no cels allowed cant even show one recently "cleared"!

infinkc.... thx for the added info on the "evap" not ready. I'm dying to try the "reset" again, last time i had to do this it went smoothly either 1st OR 2nd try! lol..

"our"(?!) govt has run amok, i tell ya i'm not being paranoid either ( i swear ) when i suggest that if it were up to "them" ( whoever them is!? ha ) we wouldn't be allowed to even drive cars like this. only a matter of time so enjoy em while "we" can. seriously.

add update: just retuned from an ill-timed attempt at a "drive cycle reset" ( ugh..) mid day up in the Ca mountains..and drove directly to my local smog tech ( after checking for readiness monitors ) all but ONE reset as they should..and i'm thinkin' that maybe, just MAYBE one out of five was gonna be ok and allow me to "pass". i had all ready but "cat not ready" and the only one allowed this year(!) as a NEW prohibition from LAST year's "rules" is "evap" not ready, as mentioned. but of course! that "evap" was "ready".

so back to my 4 AM plan. the trick is gonna be getting off this mountain in 2:15 while not going over 3k rpm driving btw 30-40 mph and then maintaining 40/60 mph for 15 mins all without stopping or going over the rpm limit.. sheesh... here i go again

it is NOT easy to maintain a 40-60 mph speed for 15 minutes! on seriously tight mountainous roads all while not going over 3k rpm. doh!

i'm telling ya. enjoy this sh*t while ya can... theyre comin for us lol

 

Good luck with the readiness drive. I did mine several times while monitoring the readiness lights of my handheld.

Reminds me, years ago I was doing the drive in SanJose on highway 87 trying to maintain the speed/RPM and not paying loads of attention to traffic near me and this Honda snuck up with a kazoo for an exhaust and let it RIP right next to me- scared the $hit out of me and I nearly went off road! I wanted to catch-up but decided to stay in the drive-cycle. In the end I needed to put stock program back on AND exhaust.

 

yeah, thats a daily occurrence up here. mostly what i'm concerned about is running INTO a cycle on my drive cycle they all seem to "train" up here and are around every blind corner

i'm eagerly anticipating my next attempt. film on friday @ 4am

this state is a lot more restrictive than any exhaust could ever be! lol.

 

Personally, I don't think the drive cycle on the 996 is as onerous as you guys make it out to be. When I dealt with this couple years ago, the thing I was fighting was the tune having turned off certain monitors, and not the ability to do a proper drive cycle. One the tune was resolved, the ready states come easily.

The voodoo drive cycle is specific to the 993. In our 996, most of the at speed cycles are cumulative. So feel free to exceed that mph and rpm range. So long as there's sufficient drive time to log enough for the test to pass.

 

that won't get it done, at least not in my experience. if i drive over 3k rpm that's it. back to square and do not "pass go". the last time i had to do this it all reset on the first try ( iirc? )..

also, and to your point..geography has a lot to do with my difficulties, as i haven't been able to get to a place where i can safely maintain the speed of 40-60 mph for the required 15 minutes..

i'm not at all certain this is a "cumulative" process at all,.. at least it hasn't been for me. but i still only need the cats to be "set" and that would be ( presumably ) the longer ( 15 min ) portion of the "reset" protocol. who knows, it was bmw's original protocol, and it works. when it works

 

I messed with this for about a year.

What finally worked for me was let the car idle 20 minutes after sitting over night, and "normal" driving over a few days.

 

a year!?

so .. it IS cumulative!? i guess i'll drive around a bit more today. i have to figure since four out of five are "ready" that its the last portion and that the cats would be the last to register as "ready"..

and the beat goes on..

 

How would anyone know how "recently" a CEL was cleared? I don't see that parameter logged anywhere. If so, where is that depicted? I was also told by a mechanic that once you clear the CEL, you are also clearing the readiness codes and will need to do the drive cycle again. That has not been my experience. I have cleared a CEL in he process of trouble shooting and all the readiness monitors remained set to pass.

Finally, can a tune be made to set the readiness monitors to pass? The mechanic said yes but I don't believe that is the case. Bueler??

 

I believe a tune can do just that as I have that now where i reset my CEL and my readiness is ready to go mind you this is with a warm car. It may only trigger one of the readiness to be bypassed. The other ones I think have to go through their normal cycle and warm ups

 

There is an OBD2 PID (parameter ID) 21 (hex): Distance traveled while MIL is activated. This counter is reset to 0 if a service 4 (clear DTCs (diagnostic error codes)) is used or there have been at least 40 warm up cycles without the MIL being activated.

There is another OBD2 PID 30 (hex): Number of warm ups since DTCs cleared.

And one more: OBD2 PID 31 (hex): Distance traveled since DTCs cleared.

If you clear DTCs, someone knows...

The info I have and what I have observed with my cars is clearing a DTC (even if one doesn't exist) also resets all readiness monitors to their not complete state.

There is a PID 41 (hex) that while not usually "visible" to the off the shelf OBD2 code readers is available to more sophisticated devices and this has a completion status field for all supported or not supported monitors. Supported (or not supported) monitors will be either set to complete or not complete for the current monitoring cycle.

As for forcing readiness monitors to complete, I suppose a sophisticated enough tune could force readiness monitors to complete but the tuner would have to have intimate knowledge of the architecture of the vehicles DME firmware and the ability to change it/customize it to do this, but this brings up some other issues.

Since the source code is not available he would have to disassemble the binary image and it takes a talented in this area of software (reverse) engineering engineer to do that with any degree of success.

In the case of the DME firmware that would I bet be in violation some copyright/licensing laws that could land the tuner in to very hot water.

 

thats what i meant. presumably they can tell by virtue of the fact the monitors are not set. but I'm not 100% certain. how about i ask them for clarification since I've been there twice in as many days and will surely return..

so having just come back from another half hearted daytime attempt at setting the last missing cat monitor i am reminded of how difficult it truly is to drive for any extended period of time without exceeding 3k rpm. the car keeps bogging and i keep blogging.

i will say though that sharing so publicly my abject failure to accomplish something "seemingly" so simple, is a pleasantly humbling experience.

i feel like shia labeouf.

 

once again, macster nails it. john was was just being a wiseguy and having a laugh on me..cant say as i blame him .. bueller! lol.

 

Thanks for the answer. There cars are much smarter than I am. lol. So why do you think that all my readiness monitors are set to pass (as in pic I posted earlier) even though I cleared a CEL? Seems contrary to to what you just posted.

Thx!

 

thats weird. i wouldn't know the answer to that either but i sure would like to borrow your ecu! I'm sure you've got a few of em lol. maybe it IS a tune feature?

as for me, I'm gonna think twice before i decat again