Any car shops in North Dallas that let you pass inspection with "check engine" light on?

[Pete53FR]

If your check engine light is on you should first worry about why and fix it. That said I don't think its fair that your car could pass if you lived in Greenville or a county that does not have the higher standards.

By the way if its an older car you may be grand fathered to a lower standard.

[SVTRay]

Originally Posted by Pawdog

Bring it to Hunt County......There's no emissions testing here.

The law requires the vehicle to be inspected in the same county as it's registration. If you don't know if your county does emissions testing, look at your inspection sticker, the outer color is green for emissions while purple is for safety only. It doesn't matter either, a safety only inspection county would still fail a vehicle with a "check engine" light. Even though a Safety only doesn't test emissions, they still check for the vehicle having the required emissions devices. A "Check Engine" light could mean the vehicles emissions system has been tampered with or removed and thus triggering the light.

My best advice is tram down the problem and fix it your self. As mentioned above, Auto-zone with test your vehicle for free and offer loner special tools.

[kenshi]

Originally Posted by SVTRay

The law requires the vehicle to be inspected in the same county as it's registration. If you don't know if your county does emissions testing, look at your inspection sticker, the outer color is green for emissions while purple is for safety only. It doesn't matter either, a safety only inspection county would still fail a vehicle with a "check engine" light. Even though a Safety only doesn't test emissions, they still check for the vehicle having the required emissions devices. A "Check Engine" light could mean the vehicles emissions system has been tampered with or removed and thus triggering the light.

You can have it inspected in another county as long as the emissions requirements are the same. I've done it many times. It will also pass a safety test with the check engine light on. They only visually inspect the underside of the car to make sure it has catalytic converters. Again, I know this from experience and know "someone" whose car passed with gutted cats. That is unless it's changed in the last two years.

[wxf848]

Obviously, the best approach is to find what's wrong and fix it. But sometimes a car's computer is really stubborn and just won't accept a repair. And sometimes the proper repair is prohibitively expensive. A last resort option is to find out if a car can pass with a single system reading "not ready" and find out the code read and find out how it's triggered. Some codes require two consecutive drive cycles. A trick I used to get a car with a defective catalytic converter to pass when I couldn't afford a replacement was to clear the codes and drive the car enough all at once to get all the other systems to "ready" condition. The catalyst monitor was "not ready" because it detected a problem but wouldn't set the code based on one drive cycle. I took the car, cold, to an inspector I know, who drives the car just a few hundred feet to test its brakes. The catalyst monitor requires several minutes of highway speed to perform the test, so it wouldn't test and set the code on that short drive. The monitor reported "not ready" and it passed because one "not ready" condition is allowed in this county. It's all legal and just used a loophole in the rules. If you learn the rules for your county and how your car's code is set, you may find such a loophole.