HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

 A big HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all you Mom's out there.  May you be waited on all day long and never wash one dish!!!

We are sitting at a warm 90 degrees on this end of town as I gathered up my stuff and headed off to the repair shop at Mercedes.  Here is my 2024 brand new van that barely has 7,000 miles on it and the State of California demands a smog test.  It failed.  

The guy told me it had a code that had never been deleted, the battery had been disconnected (what the heck does that matter) and the PORT was bad.  How could that be?

Right off the bat, there was a problem.  This screen should not have been on.  UH OH ... my house batteries are WAY low and the solar isn't working.  Big sigh ... I worked on it for 15 minutes resetting everything (there is an order don't ya know) before it FINALLY came back on.  Whew ... that was a close one.  At least now the batteries will charge once again.

So off I drove at 7:00 in the morning for my 8:30 appointment.  It's a good thing I went early.  The freeway traffic came to a screeching halt about half way there. I know the back roads pretty well, but silly me, I left the freeway and followed the GPS directions.

In no time I knew I was completely off track, with only a vague idea of where I was.  The guy ahead of me was in the same boat as I followed him down country lanes.  I arrived 30 minutes late.  JAKE .... from Mercedes .... waved me in, grabbed the keys and drove it out of sight.  Soon enough, he came back and I gave him the smog paperwork.  

There is a Perkos next door, so that's where I headed, making the mistake of jay walking right in front of a police car parked on the side street.  OH CRAP!!  He opened the window and waved.  I waved back with a big smile, hoping his door didn't open.  That was a close one!!!

Breakfast at this place is always good.  That's a Senior spinach/cheese omelette with delicious hash browns for all of $11.00.  It was pretty tasty for an old style diner.

Back at Mercedes, I got a cup of fabulous Starbucks style coffee and headed to the snack basket.  OMG it was empty!!!  About fifteen minutes went by and a gal showed up to fill it.  HAVE TWO she said!!  Had I not been so full, I just might have done that!!  

That's when the bad part happened.  I have bad news for you Jake said .... there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the van.  They tested EVERYTHING.  Those were words I did NOT want to hear.  I drove all that way with $7.69 a gallon diesel fuel and you tell me nothing is wrong????

So who is off here ... the smog shop or Mercedes?

I drove all the way back home MAD MAD MAD!!!  What a waste of time and money.  So instead of going back to the first smog shop, I went to the only other one in town.  I explained to the gal what the problem was and she said if it did not pass at another shop, it would not pass hers.  

Here's the best part .... she went outside with their code reader and came back with this.  There were NO codes ... but there are MONITORS.  What the heck is all this stuff???  They couldn't really explain it either, but said I have to drive it until those red X's go away.  So just what the heck ARE those red X's??  How many miles do I drive it?  When will this go away?  And WHAT IS IT?

No one had any answers for me, so I headed back home, did a lot of research and discovered this.  You guys who drive big newer model trucks .... you know what this is.  It's in REGEN mode.  Not one single person knew (even Mercedes) that this engine goes into regen mode with no indication of any kind anywhere on the dash of the rig.  If it's in regen mode, the smog will not pass.  

To make it worse, no one knows how long to drive it, or even HOW to drive it to get it through the program.  I finally called Mercedes and explained it to them so they would know if it happened to anyone else.  OH ... they said.  We have driving instructions for that.  I felt like slamming my head on my desk!!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Why didn't you tell me when I was there?  Because they didn't know until I explained it to them.  The driving instructions are ridiculous.  Drive 65-80 mph, de-accelerate down to 50 mph, speed up to 65, de-accelerate again .... a total of FIVE times.  Then there's city driving.  It's all a bunch of crapola as far as I'm concerned.  And just how will I know it's done?

You don't.  You just have to go to the smog shop and have them take these readings again before they do the test so it doesn't fail again.

You can imagine ... Nancy, who has no patience whatsoever for this kind of stuff .... is NOT a happy camper.  So I bought my OWN code reader scanner so I could check it myself.  Let's just say it - California sucks!!!!

I spent another hour trying to figure out how to use this thing.  There are no instructions unless you go online, give them all your personal information and set up an account.  I don't WANT an account, I just want to know what buttons to push!!!  I was in frustration overload by that time!

So to get my mind back on track, I placed a Walmart order.  You know how we were SAVING THE TREES by using plastic?  Now we are KILLING the trees by putting one item only in three of these bags.  Talk about wasteful, all of them went in the trash can.  I was hoping to make some ice cream to make me feel better, but alas, they forgot the milk.  It just wasn't my day.

Who knew that when I got this old, I would be crankier than EVER.  The people who make the rules in the world are just not up to the task.  

Oh wait .... one last thing!  The California smog machines that do the testing are NOT PROGRAMMED FOR THE NEWEST ELECTRONICS ON NEW VEHICLES.  Yup ... they don't have the money.  No surprise there.  

My only alternative is to pay the registration fees and just drive it until at some point the regen is complete and the X's disappear so I can smog it again, at which time I will have to PAY ANOTHER $65.00!!!  

I hope your Mother's Day is fabulous!!  Mine started out terrible, until I remembered I don't have to be at the lodge cooking breakfast for 400 folks.  I'm smiling over that one!!!!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!