Hello everyone, This is not an introduction section so I'm gonna go straight into the point.
I drive a 1999 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro and it was sitting around for approximately 1 year before I started driving it. It was garaged in Dallas, Texas before my sister who lives there put it on a truck to sent it to me. She went to a MIDAS shop to make sure everything is okay and the guys replaced the axle and battery before sending it to California (which is, where I live). It was fine for a couple of days and It started troubling me with the MIL/CEL light. Now I take Automotive Classes at a college in San Jose, California and I managed to borrow a OBDII scanner from one of my classmates and it showed me these codes.
P0411 Secondary Air Injector Incorrect Air Flow, Confirmed
P0422 Main Catalyst Efficiency Below Threshold (Bank 1) Confirmed
p0432 Main Catalyst Efficiency Below Threshold (Bank 2) Pending

Now, Just because you should know, I am 3 months old to this country and I don't know how it works in here so I stopped myself from going to a Auto Shop to get it fixed because I wanted advice first. So, I had to register this vehicle anyhow to drive it around. And I needed smog to do that. So after learning from my classmates that smog doesn't pass with that check engine light on I decided to erase the codes and go ahead. Unknown to the fact that smog technicians will know when you have erased codes. The trouble starts here, so obviously a car with bad catalyst converters SHOULD fail the emissions. But guess what, It passed the emissions but failed on the OBDII check because the "system wasn't ready". So the smog technician told me to drive it around for a hundred miles and comeback, what came back was the check engine light after 77 miles. So I went back to college and tried to read the codes again. What came back was,

P0110 Intake Air Temperature Sensor 1 Circuit Bank 1
P0101 Mass or Volume Air Flow Sensor "A" Circuit Range/Performance
P0102 Mass or Volume Air Flow Sensor "A" Circuit Low
P0104 Mass or Volume Air Flow Sensor "A" Circuit Intermittent
P0108 Manifold Absolute Pressure/Barometric Pressure Sensor Circuit High

I was confused, I thought to myself, thank god, the catalyst is good, I asked my instructor as to what shall I do? His advice was to erase the codes again and check what came up later. But here is the thing, I used a different scanner from SnapOn this time. The earlier one was from actron. The SnapOn was the one showing 5 codes and the actron was showing 3 and both were showing different codes. So when I tried to erase the codes from the SnapOn tool it wouldn't let me. I borrowed another Honda tool from the college shop and guess what. the honda scanner showed me

P0422 Main Catalyst Efficiency Below Threshold Bank 1 (again)

Even more confused now, Why didn't the SnapOn detect codes with the catalyst but it detected things with the MAF sensor, why did the honda and actron scanners detect codes related to the catalyst but not with the MAF sensor?

I went ahead and delete the codes for the second time, again, after a few miles the P0422 popped up and this time I used the actron scanner but not the SnapOn and Honda. Kinda scared with the SnapOn tool.

My 30 day grace period for the smog is coming to an end. But I still got that CEL/MIL light on and Im confused with all these codes. Any expert advice please!?
Sorry for narrating a story.
P.S New to this forum, sorry if I posted this at the wrong place.

Thanks in Advance

 

Clear the codes and reset the check engine light with the OBD unit. Drive the car and make note on how long it takes for the check engine light to come back on. Sometimes it will take a day or so for it to come back on. If there is something seriously wrong the check engine light will come back on in a very short time, if not immediately. If the check engine light stays off for a day or two, reset it with the tool just before you take it in for the smog check. If the light is off, and it passed the smog test before, you might make it through without an issue. BUT, be sure to get those items fixed afterwards when you have time and money.

 

That is exactly what I did before going to the smog station for the first time. They failed it ONLY because "OBD wasn't ready". Don't you think they'll do that again because Im going to do the same exact thing?

 

OBD wasn't ready? It's always ready. If the ECU is on, OBD is running.... Strange..

 

Yeah, It is kind of strange. The exact words were "The vehicle failed functional check because the OBD system was not ready to test." After every erase, It takes around a 100 miles for the check engine light to pop back on. Sometimes there is no light but there is that P0422 pending code. Do smog technicians consider a pending code a problem? Also, my friend was suggesting me to pay extra somewhere else and they'll just pass it, But, I heard that they(the smog guys I went earlier to) will know and that might cause a problem with BAR(Bureau Of Automotive Repair) is it true?

 

I really don't know anything about the Bureau of Automotive Repair in the Peoples Republic of Khalifornia. Another one of the million other reasons I'll never ever live there. I have never seen an "OBD not ready" code. If you take it to someone else, how the hell are they going to know? Does the smog gestapo log everything into a central database there? I doubt it. I'd take it somewhere else and see what happens.. If the thing passes the smog test, you've got half the battle won.