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Well, bumping this thread back up. 4 years on the dot, emissions inspection has failed again. We have typically just taken the car to the dealer and they will get it to pass, but husband decided to try to just have it inspected immediately after some heavy driving. Still failed. Car is now 6 years old and only a couple of years left on the emissions warranty so going to look at our options.
Well, bumping this thread back up. 4 years on the dot, emissions inspection has failed again. We have typically just taken the car to the dealer and they will get it to pass, but husband decided to try to just have it inspected immediately after some heavy driving. Still failed. Car is now 6 years old and only a couple of years left on the emissions warranty so going to look at our options.
How OLD is the gasoline that's in it? Fresh fuel would give anyone the best chance of passing the test. (As compared to 2 year old nail polish remover.)
Change the air filter too.
When you say "it failed" did it fail due to excessive emissions, or was it a failure due to a loose gas cap type thing?
A Scoobie with only 20,000 miles failing the sniffer? That's pretty unusual. (With proper flogging, it's not impossible, but it's still rare.)
How OLD is the gasoline that's in it? Fresh fuel would give anyone the best chance of passing the test. (As compared to 2 year old nail polish remover.)
Change the air filter too.
When you say "it failed" did it fail due to excessive emissions, or was it a failure due to a loose gas cap type thing?
A Scoobie with only 20,000 miles failing the sniffer? That's pretty unusual. (With proper flogging, it's not impossible, but it's still rare.)
The car is a daily commuter so it's not like its a very rarely used car just sitting in a garge, however the commute is really only about ~5 miles or so one way. The car had gotten fresh gas a couple of days prior to the inspection. It is the O2, evap and catalyst not being "ready" which is causing the failure. It is an exact replication of the issue that originally started this thread. Since then, every year we have to drive it hundreds of miles in a very specific drive cycle to get it to pass inspection (usually taking it immediately after quite some time on the highway) before we cut the car off. It appears that every time the vehicle is turned off it is almost like a hard-reset from our suspicions. We did similarly as we always do with the drive cycle and it still failed this time around so we took it to a dealership, they are claiming it cannot pass inspection with a full gas tank, and they wanted us to pay for labor to siphon the tank and "drive it until it passes" and told us that it would be about 4 business days total before they'd have a further update for us. Needless to say we now have an inquiry back out with Subaru corporate as the real answer should be that they need to inspect the emission components in the vehicle like the computer, sensors, etc to ensure they are functional.
As a former Honda tech, albeit retired since the year 2,000, here is my take:
Your Subaru has one or more defective sensors, they might fail intermittently or not
Your Subaru has a defective ECU, which is the Electronic Control unit or a computer in other words. It could be an intermittent failure.
Your Subaru has somewhere a wiring problem or a loose connector, again, it could be intermittent.
If the car fails the emission test after driven 2-3 miles at the most, then it is a gross polluter and should be returned to Subaru immediately. I would contact the EPA administrator in your home state. Maybe a million dollar fine for Subaru USA will get their attention, I mean Subaru's.
The right thing to do in a situation like this should be to take the vehicle away and give it to their engineers (not the dealer techs, they don't have time for that) and go through it with a fine comb to explore/discover what the hell is going on. The owners should be given another vehicle or a long-time rental.
Last edited by mgforshort; 11-28-2021 at 05:42 PM..
As a former Honda tech, albeit retired since the year 2,000, here is my take:
Your Subaru has one or more defective sensors, they might fail intermittently or not
Your Subaru has a defective ECU, which is the Electronic Control unit or a computer in other words. It could be an intermittent failure.
Your Subaru has somewhere a wiring problem or a loose connector, again, it could be intermittent.
If the car fails the emission test after driven 2-3 miles at the most, then it is a gross polluter and should be returned to Subaru immediately. I would contact the EPA administrator in your home state. Maybe a million dollar fine for Subaru USA will get their attention, I mean Subaru's.
The right thing to do in a situation like this should be to take the vehicle away and give it to their engineers (not the dealer techs, they don't have time for that) and go through it with a fine comb to explore/discover what the hell is going on. The owners should be given another vehicle or a long-time rental.
The dealership said they were able to get it to pass inspection, but have not given us specific information yet in terms of how they got it to actually pass, how many additional miles, etc it had to be driven. The vehicle has been with them a total of 3 business days, which it seems silly it would take 3 days to get it to pass. We haven't gotten confirmation on if they've actually inspected the emissions components on the vehicle to ensure they are operational.
We contacted Subaru Corporate. It is the EVAP, O2 and Catalyst not being "ready." They indicated to us that to get the car to pass emissions, it has to be driven in a specific cycle and that if you drive the cycle, then sit the car overnight, the O2 sensor will just reset and you will need to drive it again to get it to set. The Subaru corporate representative then discussed how they own a Toyota and claim they have to drive it in a specific cycle to get it to pass themselves. I drive a Toyota myself, and I've never experienced this with that car or with any other for that matter, including sports cars I've owned in the past.
They then said if the battery has been disconnected, then you would have to also redo the drive cycles. The only event in the past 2 years we can recall from service, use, etc that the battery might have been disconnected from the vehicle was back in April. We have put 2,000 miles on the vehicle since that event in a variety of highway, city driving, mixed speeds, quick/slow brakes, etc.
We informed them that we have contacted the EPA. Kind of seemed like they did not care. Just wanted to give us a $350 coupon to pay off the dealer who is telling us they want us to pay labor to get it to pass. They also did not want to call the dealer to get more information on the issue, nor get them to further inspect the major emissions components of the vehicle which are clearly still under warranty through federal mandate.
It also appears, now that we have the vehicle back, the dealership in question disconnected the battery/reset the ECU, then drove 40 miles on the vehicle to get it to pass. The reason we know the ECU was reset is when we got into the vehicle, the clock/pre-sets were all reset/missing. We have gotten a few initial quotes (not from this dealership) in what we could sell the car for, and it's approximately 80% of what we paid out the door tax/title/license 6 years ago. We are considering going the route of just ridding ourselves of this car as my husband works for another automobile manufacturer and we can get an employee benefit car ordered (in case there are some out there that would warn us how much new cars are costing these days / lack of inventory, etc).
We have also contacted our local EPA administrator and they are reviewing the information we provided them on the history of failures, in addition to what the dealership/manufacturer is telling us.
They then said if the battery has been disconnected, then you would have to also redo the drive cycles. "
This is nonsense. Late model cars are designed to pass emissions immediately after startup, but they will run a bit rich in the first 30 seconds or so.
We had a 2010 Kia Soul for 8 years. It had the habit of turning on the check engine light twice a year. After disconnecting the negative battery cable the warning light went out. Otherwise it was a very reliable car without any faults.
In some cities the local TV stations have a person called "the troubleshooter" or similar. They love to pick random stories where customers were abused or cheated. Please look into it and let us know the development. No one in this country should go through such a ridiculous experience as you had with Subaru of USA.
As a former dealer tech I understand the dealership's reluctance here, because they can spend a day or two working on your car, but Subaru won't pay a single dollar for their efforts chasing a ghost.
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