Car Inspection question

yes will automatically fail no matter what... the system wont allow it to go any further... unless u know someone of course.

 

It doesn't mean it will automatically fail but if it has anything to do with the engine emissions it will probably fail.

Go get your car scanned for free to see if it is something simple.

If it is expensive and you don't have the cash leave the battery terminal off for 2 hours to reset the code then go directly to get it inspected. Might work.

 

You might wanna check the engine. I'd be more worried about something breaking down than inspection. Hell, my inspection was due in February and my sticker is still sitting on my floorboard.

 

Might want to be careful if you disconnect the battery and then go directly to get it inspected. I had a car battery fail on me. I changed the battery with a new one and then, later that day, went to get my car inspected. I failed the inspection and it was because certain sensor readings require a certain amount of driving mileage occurs before they can get a reading after re-connecting a battery. Forget what the exact reading was...but was told had to drive my car about thirty miles to get the reading and bring back car for a re-inspection (which didn't cost me anything extra except wasting my time).

 

Some cars have a 'trick' to pull up engine codes, which you can then search for online. For example, my Jeep allows me to see any codes by turning the ignition halfway three times.

 

Go get it checked at autozone or something to see if it's an easy fix. More than likely you will fail with the light on, but it's not automatic, depends on the problem.

Like someone else mentioned, if you disc the battery, you need to run it first to allow the system to register some readings for an inspection. The trick is, when the readings come up, the problem that's triggering the check engine light may not be read yet. However, eventually it will and the light will come back on.

 

What kind of car do you have?

May be able to provide you with the procedure for clearing the code w/o having to use a scan tool.

 

is your car low on gas or did you just fill up the tank? Sometimes the Check Engine Light comes on when the gas pressure in your tank is not correct. just take the gas cap off and put it back on securely, or if your low on gas, try filling up the tank. Either one of these could make the light go back off.

 

Caseyh had the best advice so far

I'm not sure but supposedly the store gets to make $22 per inspection and there is a little town shop outside Houston that does 1000 inspections a month. The claim is that it would be pretty easy to set up and get at least 300 of those so around $6k a month.

Anyone here have any thoughts or insight on the inspection business? My wife family has an auto related businesses and father in law wants me to get involved in this inspection piece. Seems pretty boring and just don't see THAT many people constantly streaming.

 

If you have a high traffic area, nice enough place, good and quick service, advertising, spanish and english speaking inspector, AKA an ideal situation...then 250-300 is possible. For the most part, your business will increase approx 6 days before the end of the month and for 6 days after. So, for 12 days you could average like 13 a day. The other 19 days could be more like 5. That's about 250 a month.

A more realistic scenario is 8/day avg for 12 days and 3/day avg for 19 days, so around 150 a month, or $3750 (they actually keep about $25).

And if you stock wipers, gas caps, bulbs, etc, then you can also make money off of that..

 

avoid chick fil a if you can.

 

You can disconnect your battery, then drive 150 miles. Actual driving, not getting on the highway. Then just hope the light doesn't turn back on. Everytime the battery disconnects it resets the sensors so you won't fail the inspection but it won't pass because it won't get any readings. I did that last month and it passed. I swear right when I drove off after getting the sticker, the check engine light came back on haha.

 

I'm actually a State Inspector (it's not what I do for a living, but I'm licensed), and I have run an inspection station for a couple years.

bladeage is pretty much correct here, and to reiterate what others have said, the check engine light WILL automatically fail your inspection 99.999% of the time (in an emissions county). Like, out of all the thousands of cars I've inspected, I've only seen ONE pass with the MIL on. The problem is, the check engine light is almost always pertaining to something related to emissions. Even if it's not directly related (Catalytic converter, O2 sensor, etc.), it's still secondarily related (Cylinder misfire, transmission shift inadequate).

And this is not the kind of thing that you can "find a guy" for - the state has all sorts of checks and balances in place that basically require the inspector to scan the car's computer before he can issue a new sticker. There's something called "Clean Scanning" (illegal) that's been done a lot in the past, where you hook the machine up to a car that doesn't have a check engine problem and then put the sticker on the car that does - but this has been eliminated now because the inspection machine now reads the car's VIN when you hook it up for the emissions test.

To expound upon what bladeage wrote about pulling the battery and then driving 150 miles (this works for some, but not most cars) - When you pull the battery or use an OBD scan tool to reset the system, the monitors enter into a "Not Ready" state. This means the system has to collect more data before it can give a proper reading. The state will not accept this as a passable vehicle, because obviously, people would just do this to circumvent actual emissions problems. To be precise, on a 2001 or newer vehicle, you're only allowed one system monitor to be in the "Not Ready" state - unless it's the catalyst system, which fails you directly.

Okay, so now that you've pulled your battery or had the guy at AutoZone reset your system, all of the systems in your car's self-monitoring process are waiting on more data before they will give a definitive "good" or "bad" reading. To give it more data, you need to drive some. It varies from car to car, but for the most part what they use now is "Drive Cycles" - which means the car started out cold (like in the morning), then warmed up, then reached highway speeds, then turned off and cooled back down. That's ONE drive cycle. Some systems (usually Catalyst), need as many as THREE drive cycles before they've accumulated enough data to give a definitive report. In summary, on most newer cars, it takes as many as 3 days of normal driving before a reset "Check Engine" system can pass an inspection...and that's only if the computer doesn't find the same problem it found before.


My best suggestion to the OP is to have his car's computer read and try to fix whatever the problem is. If you really must circumvent the process, the simplest way would be to drive out to a county in the middle of nowhere that doesn't do emissions testing and lie to them about where you "live or drive the vehicle the majority of the time".

 

I hear sugar in the gas tank will fix that check engine light

 

not to be mistaken with salt which can be used to blow up ur target's car if added to his/her tank.

 

would like to know more. How was/is the business? Is there money in a high traffic area as RV6 suggests? The area I am looking at is high traffic and small town near Houston.

To be an inspection place can I get some kind of business license to do it and then hire certified guys or do I have to do them myself or what? Thanks man.

sorry OP to derail thread.. looks like you need to head out of town to a small mom and pop like the one I am considering getting in to. I wonder what the penalties are for a shady inspector if caught. I remember I had mine done back in the day and the guy used his wifes car when came time to load in the thing into tailpipe. He passed my inspection this way. I think I even had a light on like you. I gave him drugs. He was the best mechanic I ever had because he worked for drugs. He still lives in Houston and I would give you his name but I'm not trying to punk his illegal inspections here on bbs. This was a while ago. He probably doesn't even do drugs now.csb

 

I really don't see how "Inspection Only" places make it...they're operating on a VERY tight budget.

You do have to get a license, but I'm not sure about the prices and process with that. Then you can just hire guys who are already licensed inspectors or pay to send them to a DPS-approved class (about $100). The place I ran was in Travis County, where the going rate for inspections is $28.75. Profit margin per sticker for us was $6.25, and we did about 300 inspections per month. This was in a high traffic area (Riverside), so I don't know if you could expect much more than that elsewhere. You are allowed to charge up to $31.25 in Travis, but the going rate (28.75) is about all you'll see elsewhere so you'd be losing a lot of customers for that price.

Then the machine would break down all the damn time and DSP would charge insane rates for service calls. But if you weren't in an emissions county, you probably wouldn't have all of those problems, as it's just a computer at that point (no gas bottles and filters and probes and **** all hooked up to it).

The main premise behind our business model was that we offered all sorts of services on cars - and people HAVE to come in to get the inspection done; might as well get the oil change and air filter while they're there, right?

Oh, and they do sting cars now, because DPS has kinda outsourced the inspection stuff to the county Constables now, and those guys operate on a whole different level. Matter-of-fact, the whole reason I got that job was because they fired the guy before me after the Constables came in with full SWAT gear and guns pointed at the customers telling everybody to get on the ground after they had done a sting and found one guy that was willing to "clean scan" a car for bait money. Somehow they didn't end up pulling our license though.

The DPS rep comes in twice a month to audit all of your records and will launch a full investigation if you don't have a receipt for every single sticker sold...

All I can think as I type this stuff is "STAY AWAY!!!"

 

DallasThomas knows his stuff. who sets the emission standards? state? county? city?

when i lived in waco for a brief period there was an inspection only place near my apartment charged me $15 bucks and passed me even though i have my check engine light on for bad catalytic converter. (POS i just changed the year before) i even asked him before he did it if it mattered if the check engine light was on he said no, only if the brake light/srs light was on.

as luck would have it i'll be in waco in a couple months just in time for another yearly inspection. :grin:

 

I had the same problem,garage I went to turned off check engine light and made me drive 80 miles before I came back and it passed