Hey folks, hope you're all doing well.
Today, I want to share a funny story me and my dad had when we took our Jag for an bi-annual test.

Pre-start of the story:
So a few weeks ago, Mr. DMV had sent us a letter telling us to take our car to a STAR station to get our car smog checked (Somehow the smog check that the original owner did didn't count in for the 2 year period), and so our first step was to buy an OBDII reader because several months ago, while cleaning our Throttle Body, it threw a check engine light (and along with that are misfires) which is gone when my dad unplugged the Throttle Body Sensor, but my fear of it being a stored DTC had got us to spent $250 on an Autel MaxiDiag MD806 Pro, and when it arrive, we plug it in (it took us 10 min to find the OBDII port, thankfully Google is our friend) and everything is (thankfully) okay... There's no stored DTC, the I/M readiness show good result, and we also found something which will be useful later on: the P1111 pending DTC code (a quick google search reveal that it's the "system is ready" signal for Jags, otherwise it'll show the P1000 code which means that the system isn't ready yet). We also perform a system scan (funnily enough, there's no option for 2004 model year so we had to use the 2008-2009 option) which shows us that everything is well except for a few error (most of which are just high voltage input etc)... After that, we take our renewal notice and hit the road.

Story:
Several months ago, while having our tires patched, we notice that there's a smog check station, and the google reviews seems kinda good (except for one which said hefty prices), and so we went to that place (also quite close to our house) and when we arrived, we would be greeted with the main character of the story (A man who has a bald head, a pair of round glasses, wearing a mask and a suit which reminds me of those horror movies). At first, things went well (he pointed us to where we would park and then told us to put all car windows down, leave the engine running, and he'll start the test). However, things would soon take turn to a funny story... When he tried to plug in his OBDII reader, he struggled badly to find where the port was (he look down, up, and then getting into the driver's seat and look around) and when he later get into the shop and take out a flashlight, I had to point him where the port was, which he then respond with "Yeah yeah, I just bring my flashlight to see where the port was", and well, part 1 of 3 of the smog check begin. Within 2 minutes later, he told me and my dad to come, and he explain while pointing on his OBDII reader (which looks like something you can get at your local Walmart store, not really like the other ones that I've seen on YouTube) that despite everything is well (green mark), he could not go on because there's an "DTC", and that is P1111. I explained to him that it's not a worrying code, and it's an manufacturer specific code (meaning system is ready), but he act like I was wrong (I even show the meaning of the code from another Jaguar forum site but he refused to acknowledge that) and told us that "Other smog check shop take risks to let other pass, I don't want to take a risk and lose my score just because of a pending DTC blah blah blah", and he gave us two option: Either to let him reset the entire system (resulting in us having to perform a drive circle to satisfy it's requirement) or to go to his "associate" who will charge us $80-120USD to "fix" our car. Knowing he's trying to pull a scare on us and making us spent our money to "fix" the problem, we thanked him and went to a different smog check station (which is a bit further but seriously, they're really professional, have a ton of respect to customer to the point they apologized for letting us wait), and within 20 min, we passed with flying colors.

So what we've learned today:
-Smog tech technician sometimes aren't professional and can be a laughing stock (Didn't know where the OBDII port was, didn't know anything about manufacturer specific codes, tried to lie to us to make some extra bucks...).
-Having an OBDII reader is super handy (even if it means spending lots of money) so you don't get ripped off/be afraid of these tricks.
+Always join those enthusiasts car forum, members really know a lot of things/can help you out (Seriously, thank you to this forum as well as other Jaguar forums because ever since I've joined, I've learned so many things and helped my dad understand things)...

Anyways, I hope that the story was entertaining, and I really hope it can help any folks who's required to have a smog check on his/her car know how to sort of "deal" with those situation (Don't be scared! There's always a solution).

Have a wonderful day and a fantastic weekend!
-Tom.

 

And anyway P1111 is a pending code and they're meant to ignore those.

 

Yup, it’s just so funny how the first smog check station doesn’t know what a specific manufacturer code is.

 

Should report him as I bet he tries to scam more than just you.

Not that it would do any good I am sure just the satisfaction of doing it would help me if I was in that situation.