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Congrats. I have a '79 and an '86, both of which pass with low numbers, but as you say, it's getting harder and harder to find a smog shop willing to fire up the old rolling road contraption. Last time around, I called 4 or 5 places with the dyno set up, and they all said their dyno 'wasn't working right now' and none of them would say if/when they'd be back up and running. I have to wonder if they are not allowed to say "sorry, not worth my time' so came up with the "it's broken and I don't have any idea when it will be fixed' storyline, just to avoid these cars. I get it too, when I just smogged my '16 pickup, all they do is pop the OBDii reader in, take a glance under the hood, and wait for the computer to spit out a certificate.85targa wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 9:28 am I’m happy to report that my ‘85 passed smog today and I was told it did better than many cars of similar age. I’m north of San Francisco and the guy said fewer and fewer places were willing to do smog on older cars so hopefully Leno’s Law passes and I won’t have to do this again.
I paid $125 for mine and it took about 30-40 minutes so it’s not like it’s time consuming work for no revenue. I get that if it’s broken it might not be worth it to fix if you aren’t doing many.Tom wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 9:38 amCongrats. I have a '79 and an '86, both of which pass with low numbers, but as you say, it's getting harder and harder to find a smog shop willing to fire up the old rolling road contraption. Last time around, I called 4 or 5 places with the dyno set up, and they all said their dyno 'wasn't working right now' and none of them would say if/when they'd be back up and running. I have to wonder if they are not allowed to say "sorry, not worth my time' so came up with the "it's broken and I don't have any idea when it will be fixed' storyline, just to avoid these cars. I get it too, when I just smogged my '16 pickup, all they do is pop the OBDii reader in, take a glance under the hood, and wait for the computer to spit out a certificate.85targa wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 9:28 am I’m happy to report that my ‘85 passed smog today and I was told it did better than many cars of similar age. I’m north of San Francisco and the guy said fewer and fewer places were willing to do smog on older cars so hopefully Leno’s Law passes and I won’t have to do this again.
I agree they should be able to just price it to make the same on a per hour basis, and they basically do, so hard to know what's going on. My thinking is that it was just too coincidental that so many shops claimed to have broken dynos, unless parts/repairs are getting harder to find maybe? My cynical thought was that it's just a lot easier to plug the connector in and wait, compared to the 'work' needed to smog the non-obdii cars, especially when they have more obdii cars than they can handle.85targa wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 1:27 pmI paid $125 for mine and it took about 30-40 minutes so it’s not like it’s time consuming work for no revenue. I get that if it’s broken it might not be worth it to fix if you aren’t doing many.Tom wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 9:38 amCongrats. I have a '79 and an '86, both of which pass with low numbers, but as you say, it's getting harder and harder to find a smog shop willing to fire up the old rolling road contraption. Last time around, I called 4 or 5 places with the dyno set up, and they all said their dyno 'wasn't working right now' and none of them would say if/when they'd be back up and running. I have to wonder if they are not allowed to say "sorry, not worth my time' so came up with the "it's broken and I don't have any idea when it will be fixed' storyline, just to avoid these cars. I get it too, when I just smogged my '16 pickup, all they do is pop the OBDii reader in, take a glance under the hood, and wait for the computer to spit out a certificate.85targa wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 9:28 am I’m happy to report that my ‘85 passed smog today and I was told it did better than many cars of similar age. I’m north of San Francisco and the guy said fewer and fewer places were willing to do smog on older cars so hopefully Leno’s Law passes and I won’t have to do this again.
Yep, it's got to be a thing... Not entirely sure why, but it strains credibility to believe all the dynos across all of CA are breaking all at once, and no one knows when they can be fixed...Spencan wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 2:42 pm I had mine done this past September for $75. Since living in Gilroy over the past 15 years, 2 shops have that I had used told me the "it's broken and I don't have any idea when it will be fixed' storyline...
I guess, but it's kind of hard to believe they were all working just fine 2 years ago, and now the great majority of them are 'broken'....Efren wrote: Thu May 01, 2025 6:01 pm I think it’s more about $$$ to repair the Dyno vs how many actual cars they service. In addition to that how long it takes to test an older car vs ODB test module.
With that said in business sense it’s much easier not to repair them and just test newer cars.