Rover Thoughts: Smog Check Update –> FAILED!
Well I certainly didn’t expect this lovely 2006 Range Rover Sport with 126,000 miles to fail its first smog check since I got it. It turns out it failed on a technicality: finicky cruise control that triggered a check-engine light. While the vehicle passed its emissions and leakage tests, unfortunately, I had experienced a check-engine light when, for some odd reason, the vehicle’s cruise control feature decided to go belly-up.
The plot does thicken though…
I had noticed the cruise control acting up with an occasional message saying “Cruise Control Not Permitted” that popped up in the status display in the gauge cluster, but I never gave it much thought.
My parents’ LR4 from time to time threw that message and also a “Normal Suspension Height Only” warning, and both were typically resolved by shutting it down and starting it back up. A later search of the weirdly-passionate Land Rover owner forums on the internets turned up several folks who had had my problem and attributed it to a dirty connection between the steering wheel controls and the steering column electronics.
But what was unique to my situation was that it had actually triggered a check engine light, and that caused the smog fail. No, Bertram wasn’t making the air any worse (than any other equivalent vehicle) nor was Bertram poisoning the water table. Nope, Bertram was just being a cruise control diva. And the best part was…this happened on the way to the smog check station!
What I later discovered, is that what triggered the check-engine light, were my persistent attempts to use the cruise control despite it being “not permitted.” It would seem the car really wanted to put its foot down and get me to stop pushing its buttons…literally
And so, to that end, it was off to Euro West Rovers to diagnose the problem, and also get the one necessary repair done to the vehicle to make it usable day to day: The rear passenger door latches.
TO BE CONTINUED…
[Editor’s Note: You may have noticed that this is a new category – “Rover Thoughts.” As I will be chronicling my time as a weathered-Land Rover owner, I figured it deserved its own category, I’ll be adjusting previous posts accordingly]
