Smog Check After Your Vehicle is Stored

Background

Since we partner with a local smog check station, we often run into issues with customer vehicles before they can be smog checked.

For those of you outside of California, a smog test is basically the emissions portion of any state inspection that you have in your state.  Rather than have a comprehensive inspection, California only requires that the car pass a legal standard set forth by C.A.R.B. for pollutants expelled by the vehicle.

During storage, we disconnect your vehicle’s battery. When that happens, data centers within the vehicles computers will loose current and purge any emissions history that it has stored up over time.

Once we reconnect the battery, the vehicle will run, but its systems will be in standby until in can assure that the oxygen sensors, EGR, and other emissions related systems are performing their jobs. The way it does that? Collecting data. How does it get this data? The car has to be driven.

Problem

This puts many people between a rock and a hard place because if their registration is expired (the reason they need the smog in the first place), they cannot drive the car. However the vehicle needs to be driven to get the systems to reset.

Solution

The best solution for this we have found is to get a temporary permit from the DMV. They have these for the day and week. It will allow you to drive your vehicle legally for the short amount of miles it will take to get those systems to reset.

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