Inspection Day Miracle

The spouse’s Chevy S-10 has had the service engine light on for months. One of those silly emissions-related things that cost a fortune to fix and seem designed more to support the repair industry artificially than to be necessary to us proles. At least, that’s what my nephew’s device for speaking to car computers said, and that’s usually what it is. $500 for… being able to get a valid inspection sticker for a car that has no other symptoms than conspiring to make you fail an arbitrary regulatory hurdle.

Anyway, the sticker expired at the end of September. Money was tight even to spend $29 on inspection, so you can imagine what the extortive repair would mean. I finally took it today.

I got in the truck, started it up, and… no more engine light!

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I was worried that it somehow cleared itself, and would be in the same state clearing it electronically would create. If you use a device to clear the error electronically, the computer in the car lacks enough data for the inspection computer to say that it’s working right for emissions. You fail, and have to give it a week or so to accumulate information, then get it retested. Thus if you have a rejection sticker and repair will involve resetting it, you really should get the repair done a week or more before the deadline of the rejection sticker. Otherwise you go over, even if you didn’t want (need) to.

But no… it passed! There were no other problems, and the computers had a friendly chat that resulted in much happiness on my part. Even if there is something wrong, at least we buy time.