01yellerCobra
forum member
Thanks for your response, as you've provided some very valuable info which appears to make the most logical sense in regards to passing the OBDII scan. My question, however, is this. How would the tuning vendor go about disabling the catalyst (cats) along with turning off the rear 02 monitors? It was my understanding that if the rear 02 sensors are turned off in the tune, this would also include the rear 02 monitors as well? But apparently, this would appear to not be accurate, as turning off just the rear 02's themselves does not turn off the rear 02 monitors. Another concern is locating a tuning vendor who not only has the software knowledge but would also be willing to disable/turn off the catalyst and rear 02 monitors. The reason? Thanks to the EPA police cracking down, it's becoming more and more difficult to find a tuning vendor who's even willing to turn off just the rear 02 sensors in their calibration tunes. Tuning vendors such as VMP and AM/BAMA no longer turn off the rear 02 sensors in their tunes thanks to the EPA putting pressure on the performance industry. Therefore it's only going to be a matter of time before other tuning vendors follow suit as well IMHO. Another example is, as more and more states add newer emission machines as you also brought up, it's going to be even more difficult for those running O/R applications to pass the state OBDII emission inspection
There's a way to get the monitors to show up unsupported. But it takes a professional to do it. They have to rewrite some of the code behind the scenes basically. I have a value file for my car that makes the catalyst and EGR show up as unsupported. But now that some machines are counting monitors I elected not to run it.
Simply turning off the rear O2 sensors ONLY, you can run without cats and get NO CEL. But it will keep the catylist, rear O2, and rear O2 monitors from "completing". All 8 monitors are still present, and those 3 will remain "Incomplete" = Fail.
You disable the monitors in a different section in the tune. I have a tune that has ONLY 3 monitors showing up if you scan for OBD readiness. I got it from my tuner a week before the change went into effect with the software.
Now for the bad news regarding SCT. As of Jan 1st, all SCT dealers were forced to update their software, and if they didn't, the software stopped working. And I believe that the new software, the ability to turn off the rear O2 sensors or any other emission component in the tune has been removed. (the result of the lawsuit/fine) And now SCT is EPA legal to modify cars, but cannot disable emission equipment.
Another issue with SCT is the software cannot "pull your tune" from the device. So for minor updates like turning on rear O2, you need to go to the tuner who tuned the car, since he has the tune on his computer. Only he can make those minor changes without needing to write a new tune from scratch.
I'm still waiting to see how this goes. I took the training back in December and as of a couple weeks ago I still have full access to my emission stuff. I can turn on and off whatever I want. How long I'll keep that ability I don't know. It seems the ones that are having issues thought SCT was bluffing and didn't take the training by the dead line. I'll probably be in my software this weekend to make a couple changes. So we'll see what happens at this point.
While it sucks having to have your tuner send you an updated file, at least it can be done through email.