Hopefully someone here has had a similar vehicle, behaving in a similar way, and then had to deal with CA emission laws (how's that for a likely set of coincidences...), it's cetainly turning into a hassle for me.

I have a before me a customer's 1996 140 S500 that refuses to perform all of it's OBDII monitored tests, and as such, can't be smog inspected. Mind you, it's not a case of running and not passing, but rather not running the tests at all. I've tried to run it through MBZ's specified drive cycle(s), but with little luck. Not only is it incredibly time consuming, and hence money consuming for the customer, but I can't run it through an official drive cycle since temperatures here never allow it to get within MBZ's specs. Allowing the customer to drive it through it's paces is not likely to work out, as the drive cycle consist of highly unlikely driving scenarios, and the tests require that the A/C be turned off. No one is going to want to drive around for hours with no A/C, at least not for several months (I'm odd, I never use A/C, but I know most do, besides, I'm getting paid to do it so...).

Just curious if you guys have ever heard of/dealt with anything like this. From everyone I've talked to, it looks like after we've tried to run an official drive cycle (been there, done that), and it hasn't run it's tests (it hasn't), that the next step is for the customer to take it before a referee and plead his case. Anyone had to do so? Anyone have any other ideas? I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for any info anyone wants to share.

MV

MV