This was the 3rd year in a row where I took my car for emission / inspection.
They told me they could not read the OBD codes. There is no "CEL". Had to go to another station where they did emissions test via Dyno machine. They said that it is a know fact that this year / model car is stubborn with its stored codes.
Has anyone heard of this? By the way, Dyno test was great. Engine runs perfectly well.

Calvin,

Here is what I do know, and others can chime in.

I owned a 1998 V70, that after I replaced the head still would not show that the emission system was ready to be inspected after about 3 weeks of normal daily driving. In fact it took about 6 months for the car to finally show that it was ready, meaning all the emission system had been cycled by the ECU and were now ready.

That is what your emissions guys are looking for. If the CEL is off, there are no codes to be read, though there might be stored code, but I am unsure of this. They are looking to see if your Secondary Air injection System (SAS), Oxygen Sensor(s) (O2s), Heated Oxygen Sensor (HO2s), Catalytic Converter, and a few others that currently escape me have been cycled and are now ready.

These cars are what I call the bastard step child of Volvo's. The 98's were the in-between years of OBD2 and Volvo going to a more Volvo specific OBD2 system. The Volvo Vida Dice system I believe. I have a 2007 XC70 that I can not read with my standard OBD2 scanner, but a more expensive one can, and apparently they do some sort of translation when spitting out the data, or at least that is my conclusion, because this scanner works on my 2003 Honda Odyssey.

My question to you is, how often do you drive this car, and for that matter long do you drive it when you do? I recently had my S70 worked on in the fall and it took about a month for the emission system to set itself ready. Now granted it was only driven for short trips initially, but there were also some long ones (over an hour in duration) in there as well.

Do some research on the topic Volvo and their 1998 model year and how it relates to emissions and OBD2 and you will find that it does in fact take longer. They do not define what a true drive cycle is, and since they do not, you could be driving a lot until you have reached the number of cycles that Volvo has laid out for the emission to finally set themselves ready.

Hope this help and makes sense to you.

Matt
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1989 - 245, 1990 - 245, 1991 - 245, and 1993 - 245

It's been exactly 1 year since last test, and about 5000 miles of driving.

2000 V70 SE NA, Denso, AW-55, 256k miles.

This has me thinking, about removing the cylinder head and then once it’s repaired, waiting forever to sync up the ECU and emissions systems to Pass the CA smog test (April 2019). I’ll know more Monday when we do a compression check, but I suspect the dead #3 cylinder has a burned exhaust valve.

It is what it is I suppose, and will have to deal with it if/when the symptoms show.

Background as raised in earlier BB posts: #3 plug fouled every 500 miles or so and a fresh plug would fix the problem, until it fouled again. This last time around, a new plug failed to fix, and now #3 has a constant misfire. Cylinder is absolutely dead.

I’ll know more after Monday.