Adding US emissions readiness to CSL Software

[smee123]

I've had my car through CT OBD emissions twice now with the CSL software, never been a hiccup. All monitors are either NA or Ready.

Ive not had success with this in NY. Had to go back to stock to pass.

[jylee05]

So the deal is the CSL software was never subject to the emissions recall that the standard M3 was since the CSL was never sold in the US. This means OBDII communications sometimes don't work properly with some emissions computers. It's not a guaranteed fail - it took BMW 8 years to end up doing the recall, so really it does work most of the time. Apparently some emissions testing equipment is more sensitive than others.

As for whether or not it's possible for us to implement the fixes ourselves - it is theoretically possible, but it's not trivial. You need to identify the changes made for the emissions recall, and port those to the CSL software, and that's not nearly as easy as I make it sound when we're talking about editing assembly code by hand.

To my knowledge, no one has done a proper fix yet. My county doesn't do OBDII testing, so it hasn't been an issue for me. I probably would have done it by now if I did live somewhere where I needed to reliably pass OBDII checks... but I don't.

I'm guessing there is gold to be found in those CA mountains for anyone who has the technical know-how and time to do this...

[Slideways]

It's really hit or miss.

Both of my cars have identical software and setups on them. One passed at a specific station and when I took the other one there a few months later, they weren't able to read it. Went down the street to another station and it read and passed just fine.

Did you try to cycle the key (shut the car off and restart it)?

[exodus454]

I've had my car through CT OBD emissions twice now with the CSL software, never been a hiccup. All monitors are either NA or Ready.

[Steve]

It's really hit or miss.

Both of my cars have identical software and setups on them. One passed at a specific station and when I took the other one there a few months later, they weren't able to read it. Went down the street to another station and it read and passed just fine.

[tone]

Flashing your SMG ECU will have no effect on your car being able to communicate with the emission computers. This is only affected if you go to CSL software on your DME (which you probably will only do if you have a CSL airbox).

Hahaha. So I was right to think the SMG flash wouldn't have any impact on emissions -- sweet!

[heinzboehmer]

Really glad I came across this post.

Until I source the parts to do a 6MT conversion, I wanted to put the CSL SMG software on my car. It never occurred to me that this might mess with CA smog!

Given that I have smog this year, should I just apply the inertia fix and rev matching with Ecuworx and skip flashing the CSL software? Or is it easy enough to go back? Do I just need a BMWFlash backup to get back to stock?

Flashing your SMG ECU will have no effect on your car being able to communicate with the emission computers. This is only affected if you go to CSL software on your DME (which you probably will only do if you have a CSL airbox).

[tone]

Really glad I came across this post.

Until I source the parts to do a 6MT conversion, I wanted to put the CSL SMG software on my car. It never occurred to me that this might mess with CA smog!

Given that I have smog this year, should I just apply the inertia fix and rev matching with Ecuworx and skip flashing the CSL software? Or is it easy enough to go back? Do I just need a BMWFlash backup to get back to stock?

[repoman89]

I've mentioned it in another thread fairly recently, but just to throw it out there -- the CSL software on my car could not communicate with Kaaaalifornia state emissions computers. The tech tried for 15 minutes and it just cannot establish communication.

So long story short for the California members running the CSL airbox and software - - you'll have to spend the hour swapping everything back to stock for the test.

Or flash to a regular US Alpha-N tune with whatever modifications you need to pass. The US firmware can be modified to run on the CSL boot loader in the same way that the CSL software runs on the US boot loader in the MSSflasher mod file. I haven’t done it yet but that’s my plan if my car won’t pass in MA.

[Amalgam]

Can emissions readiness still be set when running an alpha n tune?

Outside of the visual, what if you flashed a standard (non-CSL) BIN / alpha n tune and used that to communicate with the emissions computer and then re-flash the map based CSL tune?

[2004LSB]

I've mentioned it in another thread fairly recently, but just to throw it out there -- the CSL software on my car could not communicate with Kaaaalifornia state emissions computers. The tech tried for 15 minutes and it just cannot establish communication.

So long story short for the California members running the CSL airbox and software - - you'll have to spend the hour swapping everything back to stock for the test.

[jbfrancis3]

Grateful for the reminder of the details, terra.

I look forward to the day you move to Virginia and this becomes a more pressing issue for you

[terra]

So the deal is the CSL software was never subject to the emissions recall that the standard M3 was since the CSL was never sold in the US. This means OBDII communications sometimes don't work properly with some emissions computers. It's not a guaranteed fail - it took BMW 8 years to end up doing the recall, so really it does work most of the time. Apparently some emissions testing equipment is more sensitive than others.

As for whether or not it's possible for us to implement the fixes ourselves - it is theoretically possible, but it's not trivial. You need to identify the changes made for the emissions recall, and port those to the CSL software, and that's not nearly as easy as I make it sound when we're talking about editing assembly code by hand.

To my knowledge, no one has done a proper fix yet. My county doesn't do OBDII testing, so it hasn't been an issue for me. I probably would have done it by now if I did live somewhere where I needed to reliably pass OBDII checks... but I don't.

[jbfrancis3]

terra would know the answer right off the top of his head.

[skristedja]

I would love if this could happen. I haven't had a smog guy open the hood in years, but if it doesn't pass on the OBD, then no pass.