Hello. I'm due for a smog check and I'm wondering if anyone could tell me if my OBD II monitor readiness status will pass based off what Durametric shows:

Pass:
Misfire monitoring
Mixture adaptation
Other exhaust-related components
Catalyst monitoring
Secondary air system
Oxygen sensors
Oxygen sensor heater
VarioCam Plus

The rest is still in "fail" status. It took some mixed city and freeway driving for "oxygen sensors" and "catalyst monitoring" to change to "pass" status.

Do any of the others need to be in "pass" status in order to pass the smog check? Thank you!

 

It passed.

 

Does a battery change affect the OBD status? I have a 2007 Turbo with 14,000 miles, mostly a garage queen. I changed my battery 2 months ago and the car sat for a while and I only drove it around 100 miles. I went to get a smog check and it failed because the OBD was not "ready". How do I cure this? Drive it for a certain number of miles? Any help will be appreciated.

 

There is a specific procedure to get the indicators to ready status - should be able to search earlier threads or may be in owners manual - it involves driving something like 43 miles but I don't recall specifics.

 

A battery swap will have the OBD readiness monitors reset along with the fuel trims and other things.

With both my 2002 Boxster and my 2003 996 Turbo the readiness monitors were set to complete at some point in my 30 mile drive to the office.

The drive was nothing but ordinary. A cold start -- but in CA where I live not very cold -- with after just a moment or two of idling I backed the car out and hit a surface street and drove not even 1/2 mile to the freeway. Then it was freeway -- though not always at freeway speeds (65mph here) due to traffic -- until I had to leave the freeway and take a surface street maybe a mile to the office.

'course, I drove the car easy until warmed up but even after it was warmed up didn't hammer on the car. If one uses too much throttle the engine controller can switch to open loop mode and suspend monitoring of the #2 O2 sensors. This might stall, delay, even abort some readiness monitor tests until the next engine start so avoid hard acceleration during your drive.

If you don't drive the car very much the chances the gasoline may be stale are high. If so the stale gasoline might affect engine performance and cause readiness monitor testing problems. The Turbo is a very highly tuned engine and to operate at its best requires fresh gasoline of the proper octane grade. In CA we are already handicapped by having only 91 octane gasoline available. I never had a problem in all my years with 91 octane and getting the readiness monitors to complete and to pass smog but I made sure to buy gasoline from a busy station and both my cars got used enough to require adding gasoline once a week so both had reasonably fresh fuel at all times.

A smog test time or two back my Boxster did fail smog -- this was when the tailpipe sniffer was being used. One of the exhaust gas components (CO2 I think) was too high. Talked to my favorite Porsche techs -- separately -- and both suggested a good spirited drive. The car received regular usage mainly as my work commuter which meant it got driven 60 miles a day, so I was a bit surprised by their advice.

Even so I decided to follow it and I took the car out and on some back roads where I could open the engine up more than I usually do. Ended up around 25 miles away from home and drove freeway all the way back but most of the time I was behind a CHP cruiser so I had to cool my jets. I had the car retested just a few hours after the 1st test and the car passed with flying colors.