Okay possibly dumb question, but I have to ask. My SL2 failed the emissions inspection the other day, the print out they gave me said the O2 sensor, and Catalytic Converter were in a "not ready" state. Now the car has been sitting for a few months with the battery disconnected as I worked out some other minor bugs to get it ready to pass the annual safety / emissions garbage. (Specifically brakes, belts, hoses etc... yes this is our second car...).

The guy at the inspection station told me that I need to drive the car about 100 miles to clear this state from the ECM. Does that sound like B.S. to anyone but me?

 

no it is not bs. it's called a drive cycle. PCM must have enough data to determine if the sensors are operating correctly -- this info is collected over drive cycles for different sensors -- the "not ready" means it hasn't collected enough data yet.

you can look up the details of exactly what constitutes a drive cycle


PS: if you clear the stored codes with a scanner, the status of all of those kinds of systems goes to "not ready" in the PCM so going to the insp station right afterwards gets you another fail if you haven't completed the drive cycle

 

Nope, no scanner, just yanked the battery. My inspection expired in November. As you may recall from prior posts here, I had a power steering pulley explode on it prior to getting in to the inspector, well things have sort of sat...

I won't be able to do much about it until this weekend. I guess I will take it down to Galveston on Saturday to get some highway time... I rarely if ever hit the highway with this car... It's all back and forth to work stuff, 7 miles, through residential areas, and school zones... No chance to hit 55 at all unless I want a mean ticket out by the nature center...

 

read this (LowSaturn's post)

https://www.saturnforum.com/forum/sh...ht=drive+cycle

 

I had the same problem when I changed the battery. I failed inspection. I had to make sure I drove it every day for a few weeks and it was fine.