Pi**ed at Volvo (about S70 smog test)!

(just in case you weren't aware...) You can (and should) pay the fees (online even, with an ATM/visa) though you haven't passed yet. CA will gladly take your money and it will avoid any $$ penalties. Tags will show up 7-10 after the smog place's computer phones in the pass.

Sorry, can't help on anything else...

Appreciate! Just found the same thing after reading the notice carefully and paid with CC. Now the timing pressure is temporary off. I'll try to drive this car as much as I can and hope it passes in a month. Otherwise do you guys know the consequence of driving with expired sticker? Some fine if I'm pulled off by an officer right?

If you guys have similar experience or advises to share, please do so!

clay wrote:

Dunno about California, but in Arizona there is a one calendar month grace period for the physical sticker, because registrations due by the end of September may not arrive in the owner's mail until sometime in October. In November officers are looking for September and earlier. If found without current registration in the vehicle, the officer writes you a ticket. Normally you can appear at arraignment and show the registration and the judge will dismiss the ticket. If that fails, the fine is impressive indeed - something like $500 IIRC. I would expect it to be larger in California.

Mike

I've been this route several times with my '83 245. I typically have a stack of (current) pretests, tests, and documentation of my payment piled in the passenger seat. If I were to get stopped, I'd point it out with a two sentence summary of the situation and hope for the best. If they're stopping you for tags, they're looking for drunks or drugs. If they're stopping you for something else, they may or may not add the tags to the ticket. Bottom line, It could go anywhere between an admonishment to get it taken care of, to getting a fixit ticket, impounded, handcuffed and beaten, tasered or shot. Looks like you're down in south county. Unless you play football, I wouldn't worry about getting shot... In more than 30 years of driving SoCal roads, and being stopped many times, I've received way more admonishments than beatings...

I have a 1998 S70 T5, and I couldn't pass the Texas emissions tests either for a while. I've shared this story before ... first 2 shops registered "communication failure" and couldn't proceed with the emissions tests. 3rd shop was OBDII only, and it said 6 different codes weren't ready. The last shop was recommended by a Volvo dealer and for good reason! They knew that Volvos have problems with readiness codes, and it's a published fact. So, their machinery allowed them to switch to the old style emissions test where they run your car on a dyno and check the exhaust.

I passed without issue there.

I'd call another shop and ask for recommendations for places that have experience with Volvos, emissions and recalls.

It's only 1996 850 turbos that reset monitors every time the car is turned off. My experience with 2 '98 T5s has been that it takes a while to set the monitors, but never more than a week. Note that driving at a constant (low) speed will NOT set these monitors. You need some periods of idling of more than 70 seconds, interspersed into driving. Low speed only allows the check to happen more quickly. So a daily commute that includes highway driving with some moderate city traffic at both ends should set the monitors. My wife's commute that includes about 30 minutes of open highway driving with about 10 minutes of city traffic at each end will set all the monitors in 1 day. I also avoid disconnecting the battery unless absolutely necessary, to keep the monitors set.

Ship your car up here, I'll send my wife to work one day in it! :)

This is a great idea. I might read your story a while ago but couldn't remember clearly.

You know what? My car happened to have 6 codes not ready too.

The local dealer is of no help as they just want to charge me $340 for getting the readiness codes. California law may be different from Texas and doesn't allow "alternative" test. So far everyone I asked said my car has to be connected to computer with readiness codes checked.

But since I've exhausted all resources, I'll simply ask around for any smog test places that know about this. Dyno test it is right?

Thanks!

M wrote:

Just found out it's inconvenient sign-in and out with different accounts for posting in this group. So I'm using my Google account instead the original one. Hope it doesn't attract too much spam.

Since my sticker is Oct., I'll have the next whole month to get it right. If not I hope the officer can be understanding. This area has plenty of patrol cars and the fine is $70 with expired sticker. I know because my wife was pulled once as I was late in applying the new sticker. Luckily it was dismissed by a judge after we proved that the fee was paid in time. Still a hassle though.

Luck me. I don't play football! ;)

clay wrote:

What, are you posting to googlegroups with your browser? If you post via your news server then you can use 'alternate' email addresses in Thunderbird. Go to "Manage identities" under account settings and create a munged email address. Then you can switch to it by pulling down the 'From' window. Better, set it to be the default for the news server you're using.

When I realized that I posted with my Google email account, I knew that I've made a big mistake. Usually I did it with this Yahoo "address guard" account so I could disable it if spams get bad.

However, Google Groups keep remembering my Google mail account (or I kept forgetting to sign out after checking Google mails). That's why such a mistake is made. It's likely to happen again unless I do something like you suggested.

Isn't Thunderbird just an email client?

Can it be used as a newgroup manager? If not what do you recommend? I usually read and post through Google Groups. This is a habit extended from my Dejanews days. Though I also used News capability in Outlook before. Looks like my 10+ years of Usenet skills need an update.

clay wrote:

_____ Yes. I use it every day under Linux and OpenBSD. It is also available for Windows 2k, XP. As you can see, my "From" address is bogus, and is the default when i read news groups. The suggestion made below about Thunderbird is correct.

Thunderbird does a passable job as a newsreader for text groups. Not so good for binary.

Go to Tools>Account settings. Below the left column that shows your existing account(s) you'll see 'Add Account'. Pick add newsgroup and fill in the blanks. (Mozilla even has it's own server for support and such. news.mozilla.org) Kind of nice to have (most) all your email accounts and newsservers accessible in one screen. It won't do some webmail accounts. I've managed to get Netscape webmail to work but not yahoo.