[John Rogers]

When I had my 2000 Ford F350 7.3 diesel tow vehicle I added a different intake and 5 inch exhaust both by AFE and an aftermarket programmable Edge with Attitude computer that had "stock", "economy" "tow" and "race" preset modes. The truck was ODBII compliant and when CA started checking diesels for smog they plugged in their reader and looked at the computer settings, blipped the throttle to check for excess smoke and that was all. I had the Edge unit in "stock" mode and the smog fellow never saw any thing. He did keep looking for a catalytic converter as one of his manuals said 2000 year Fords were supposed to have one but the others said no. The sticker on the right side valve cover did not list one so I passed.

I noted the readings which were the time the injectors fired, when they fired as to engine RPM and fuel pressure. I plugged my AutoEnginuity software in after I got home and pulled up the data windows for these readings and then changed the computer settings to see what happened and the biggest shock was in "economy" mode where injector fire time was about 65% of stock which is why the millage went up to 20 MPG vice 14 MPG for stock! The software would tell the brain in the truck, hey here I am, I want to get some readings so when ever I needed to read values they were handy. I would guess that since the function of the pinouts are readily known, what they do for various model car/engine combos is also known that it is easy to have the software tweak the settings.

I did note that the last smog test I had run on my Chevy HHR 2.4L, the tester plugged in his wireless reader, read things for about 2 minutes and I was done. No rolling road, no inspection or anything?!