Brought my 02 to Honda dealer for inspection couple days ago. Failed the inspection due catalyst converter is not ready. The tech told me to take the car out for a good drive over the weekend and bring it back on Monday. Catalyst converter fail could be due to not enough driven . How could this be when I putted 18K miles in the pass 11 months. I am really puzzled. Anyone has advise on this??

 

You haven't put in any "suspicious" fuel have you? I can't see a 2 year old cat failing. Even it just sat there, it still should be OK. I can't see how driving it for the weekend will change anything. Maybe they want to sell you a new cat for how many hundreds of dollars? I'd try another dealer.

 

I thought emmssions parts warrented for 70k mile(or looong time). no?

 

The Convertor is covered for 8yrs/80K.

It sounds like the Tech just looked at the monitor list, and the covertor monitor was not completed. It does take specific driving conditions for the computer to run a system monitor.

I'd bet the convertor is fine, The Tech could have driven the car under the monitor enable conditions to get a "passed" result.

Every state has different emmisions testing laws, I'm not familiar with Texas law. It sounds like just a visual check, and a OBDII monitor check to verify all emmisons monitors passed and no DTC's stored.

 

All states have 8yr/80kmi warranty on emissions control devices. I believe California has 10yr/100kmi.

What kind of mods do you have on the car? Past repairs?

 

Hi Andy,

Did you reset the ECU (or take off the battery cable) just before you took your car in?

In case of the above, the OBD system will not give the "readyness code" for catalyst monitoring and you will indeed have to drive the car for a while to set it.

This does not necessarily mean the cat is failing btw. and does not throw the MIL (Check Engine Lamp).

Regards,


Siepel

 

Guys, thanks for the responses

My car is a bone stock. I am paying mortgage and 2 car payments so no mod to it yet.

Siepel, someone from the dealer did take off the battery cable. I have to reenter my radio code after I got it back from the dealer. So this could be the case. Thanks

 

Seems to me that the vehicle failed the smog inspection because not all of your monitors have run. When the battery cable is disconnected the ECU will loose its memory and the car must be driven in order for the ECU to run the monitors( self check of emmission components such as 02 sensor, map sensor, CAT and so on).