deanking
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I wanted to document this for anyone in the hope that it helps them. I searched forums far and wide and rarely did I see it stated the way I am going to. These are my experiences. Your mileage may vary.
First the setup. I live in an area that does OBD Plugin emissions testing. I want my car to be emissions legal. I have not done anything that should make it illegal or not pass a plugin test. If you have removed your cats or changed something else fundamentally, this is not the thread for you. This is about getting an emissions legal car to pass. When I talk about emissions monitors in this post, I am only talking about Heated O2s, O2s, and the Cat monitor. They are all related. The O2s must set for the Cat monitor to set. And where I live you can only have 1 monitor not set so having 3 not set is a condition where they will not conduct the emission inspection. So no fail but no pass either. They send you home and tell you to drive the car more.
I started with an airbox, exhaust, and an aftermarket tune from a very reputable tuner provided on an SCT X4. The tune is by far the biggest power boost of the trio. In this case, you would be dealing with one of their stock tunes. They have a great off road tune that really improves the drivability and power in the car. But they consider this an off road tune and it turns off some of the monitors for emissions. They monitors still show as enabled but the tune turns off setting them somehow. They will NEVER go ready. It doesn't matter how much you drive it. If you ask for an emissions tune you will not get nearly the amount of improvements. I am not sure it is really worth it. What you could do is get both and put the off road tune on for racing and the emissions tune for road driving. Or just use the stock Ford tune for street driving. There are other combinations possible but I am not discussing anything sketchy in this post. This is where it gets interesting: my car would not set the monitors even with the emissions tune. I am not alone if you search the internet. It seems that certain cars are just pickier than others. What can be frustrating is that there are those that suggest you just have to keep driving the car. I never found that to be the case. When the tune is right, my car will set monitors within 15 minutes of mixed 2 lane, 4 lane driving. When it is not right, it will never set. I don't know why certain cars are picky.
So I was nervous when I moved up to a supercharger. Now I had no more option of returning to my stock Ford tune for street driving. I again got a performance tune but this time, the monitors were left on. Well they were supposed to be but it seems that whenever you get the first file, they are always turned off. You have to contact them and ask them to turn them back on. But I had the same emission monitors problems. The aftermarket tuner was very responsive in support and tried multiple things but in the end, they could not get them to set. I ended up using the Edelbrock Tune that is sold with the supercharger. My monitors all set in 15 minutes. It is helpful to know the Ford drive cycle but it is really not required. That cycle is way too stringent and hear impossible in a metro area without starting some kind of road rage incident. I didn't need to do it. Make sure the outside temp is in the range of the drive cycle, have 3/4 tank of fuel, and just drive mellow (the drive cycle calls it "steady foot") and keep it between 45 - 65 in mixed driving and they all set. Quickly. Now the Edelbrock tune is 100 less HP, shifts like it is in the mud, and comes on like a turbo around 3000 RPM (which is really weird). But it works. So that is my advice for people: get the manufacturer 50 state legal tune as your insurance policy. What you do after that is up to you but it is good to have that in the bank. My second piece of advice is whenever you put a custom tune on your car, spend the extra $30 for an OBD reader and check your emissions readiness. Don't be like me and find out from the inspection station when your sticker is due. That is stress you don't need. In fact, don't even consider a tune on your car unless you have a few months to straighten out any problems before inspection is due.
I am not disparaging my aftermarket tuner. They are very good at what they do and I know people who got their cars to set monitors with their tunes. It is just that their tunes are less forgiving than some factory tunes and if your car is one of the unfortunate picky cars you are screwed that no amount of driving will fix. I cringe whenever I hear about the people that put a thousand miles on it hoping it will set. Telling some person to just keep driving it isn't going to work in most cases. Anyone who has gotten to the point of scouring forum posts because they won't set usually has a real problem that driving won't fix. .
One more thing all the unfortunate souls seem to ask in their posts: can I tell if my monitors are turned off? As best I can tell NO. You can tell if they are disabled but that is something entirely different. If they are disabled they will be grayed out in an OBD scanner. That is an automatic fail at any modern inspection station. But the tuner can turn off the monitor in the tune. Somehow. Then they are enabled but will never set. You can monitor the live data and all the O2 sensors will be sending a signal. So there is no way to tell that I am aware of. You have to take the tuner's word that they are turned on.
Don't leave an OBD monitor plugged in overnight. It will kill your battery. Don't think reloading the tune will fix something. All it will ever do is reset all the monitors and you are starting all over.
I hope this helps someone else avoid the bad situations and 30 hours of internet research I did.
First the setup. I live in an area that does OBD Plugin emissions testing. I want my car to be emissions legal. I have not done anything that should make it illegal or not pass a plugin test. If you have removed your cats or changed something else fundamentally, this is not the thread for you. This is about getting an emissions legal car to pass. When I talk about emissions monitors in this post, I am only talking about Heated O2s, O2s, and the Cat monitor. They are all related. The O2s must set for the Cat monitor to set. And where I live you can only have 1 monitor not set so having 3 not set is a condition where they will not conduct the emission inspection. So no fail but no pass either. They send you home and tell you to drive the car more.
I started with an airbox, exhaust, and an aftermarket tune from a very reputable tuner provided on an SCT X4. The tune is by far the biggest power boost of the trio. In this case, you would be dealing with one of their stock tunes. They have a great off road tune that really improves the drivability and power in the car. But they consider this an off road tune and it turns off some of the monitors for emissions. They monitors still show as enabled but the tune turns off setting them somehow. They will NEVER go ready. It doesn't matter how much you drive it. If you ask for an emissions tune you will not get nearly the amount of improvements. I am not sure it is really worth it. What you could do is get both and put the off road tune on for racing and the emissions tune for road driving. Or just use the stock Ford tune for street driving. There are other combinations possible but I am not discussing anything sketchy in this post. This is where it gets interesting: my car would not set the monitors even with the emissions tune. I am not alone if you search the internet. It seems that certain cars are just pickier than others. What can be frustrating is that there are those that suggest you just have to keep driving the car. I never found that to be the case. When the tune is right, my car will set monitors within 15 minutes of mixed 2 lane, 4 lane driving. When it is not right, it will never set. I don't know why certain cars are picky.
So I was nervous when I moved up to a supercharger. Now I had no more option of returning to my stock Ford tune for street driving. I again got a performance tune but this time, the monitors were left on. Well they were supposed to be but it seems that whenever you get the first file, they are always turned off. You have to contact them and ask them to turn them back on. But I had the same emission monitors problems. The aftermarket tuner was very responsive in support and tried multiple things but in the end, they could not get them to set. I ended up using the Edelbrock Tune that is sold with the supercharger. My monitors all set in 15 minutes. It is helpful to know the Ford drive cycle but it is really not required. That cycle is way too stringent and hear impossible in a metro area without starting some kind of road rage incident. I didn't need to do it. Make sure the outside temp is in the range of the drive cycle, have 3/4 tank of fuel, and just drive mellow (the drive cycle calls it "steady foot") and keep it between 45 - 65 in mixed driving and they all set. Quickly. Now the Edelbrock tune is 100 less HP, shifts like it is in the mud, and comes on like a turbo around 3000 RPM (which is really weird). But it works. So that is my advice for people: get the manufacturer 50 state legal tune as your insurance policy. What you do after that is up to you but it is good to have that in the bank. My second piece of advice is whenever you put a custom tune on your car, spend the extra $30 for an OBD reader and check your emissions readiness. Don't be like me and find out from the inspection station when your sticker is due. That is stress you don't need. In fact, don't even consider a tune on your car unless you have a few months to straighten out any problems before inspection is due.
I am not disparaging my aftermarket tuner. They are very good at what they do and I know people who got their cars to set monitors with their tunes. It is just that their tunes are less forgiving than some factory tunes and if your car is one of the unfortunate picky cars you are screwed that no amount of driving will fix. I cringe whenever I hear about the people that put a thousand miles on it hoping it will set. Telling some person to just keep driving it isn't going to work in most cases. Anyone who has gotten to the point of scouring forum posts because they won't set usually has a real problem that driving won't fix. .
One more thing all the unfortunate souls seem to ask in their posts: can I tell if my monitors are turned off? As best I can tell NO. You can tell if they are disabled but that is something entirely different. If they are disabled they will be grayed out in an OBD scanner. That is an automatic fail at any modern inspection station. But the tuner can turn off the monitor in the tune. Somehow. Then they are enabled but will never set. You can monitor the live data and all the O2 sensors will be sending a signal. So there is no way to tell that I am aware of. You have to take the tuner's word that they are turned on.
Don't leave an OBD monitor plugged in overnight. It will kill your battery. Don't think reloading the tune will fix something. All it will ever do is reset all the monitors and you are starting all over.
I hope this helps someone else avoid the bad situations and 30 hours of internet research I did.
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