BUT THE GUY I BOUGHT IT FROM PROMISED ME.....The vehicle passed just last September. YEAH , RIGHT!

Now you 've driven it hard for 11 months on the unexpired tags, the registration is about to expire, and your back is against the wall. If the guy knew it would pass, why didn 't he get it tested and give you the certificate at the time of sale. The parking tickets you've gotten have all gone to his house until he finally found the release of liability form in a stack of papers and sent it off to the DMV. He was, after all, legally responsible to give you the smog certificate at the time of sale.

So you go off to the neighborhood smog test shop early Saturday morning perfectly confident of a no hassle pass. All seems well until the smog tech exits your vehicle shaking his head and mutering to himself as he enters more data into the machine. He seems to be spending more time than your used to under the hood, flashlight in hand, only to go back to the machine and hit the final button revealing the test results which have been returned from Sacramento. FAIL, FAIL, FAIL-GROSS POLLUTER . IF the shop is a TEST AND REPAIR shop. He's already figuring out how much this thing is going to take to get resolved. His car payment is due last week, and when pressed for a sum specific, He quickly calculates next months and asks for the opportunity to diagnose the problem, on your dime, before He can get back to you with the staggering figure. Since it 's now classified as a 'gross polluter.' One thing He knows for sure is that in the end of all things, after you 've been to all of your close relatives to get the ransom He requests, this vehicle can now only get the final certificate from a TEST ONLY SMOG shop as per government regulation. Someone is going to have to pay fo that shops services also, and it won 't be HIM.

Now it 's failed and you are informed that it 's YOUR responsibility to spend whatever princely sums to get it to pass before it gets ticketed again for expired tags and finally impounded until you can produce the funds necessary to bail it out of impound. And they 'll only release it to the REGISTERED OWNER. OOPS.

AND THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS: GET THE SMOG CERTIFICATE FROM THE SELLER BEFORE YOU FORK OVER THE MONEY FOR THE CAR AND, REGISTER IT RIGHT AWAY. Failing that, It probably would have better to have gone to a TEST ONLY SMOG SHOP from the beginning and if failing the test, to shop the repairs to several TEST AND REPAIR shops to get the best price, returning to the TEST ONLY SHOP for your FREE RETEST .