Testing Equipment
Gordon-Darby is the only I/M contractor that produces all of its own hardware and software systems - all software is also custom designed by Gordon-Darby. We combine a limited number of hardware components obtained from outside vendors with internally manufactured equipment to create our own systems. Test equipment designed and manufactured by the company includes:
- Decentralized Idle, OBD-only and OBD/Safety test systems and repair shop carts
- Centralized Idle, loaded mode and OBD test systems
- Vehicle chassis dynamometers
- Vehicle and gas cap evaporative integrity test systems
- Diesel vehicle snap idle test systems
- Automated vehicle safety test systems
This puts us at a decided advantage to our competitors from many standpoints. We are not heavily reliant upon third-party vendors and are therefore not subject to their scheduling constraints. By manufacturing and assembling our own equipment, we are not subject to implementation delays due to equipment non-delivery or other supply problems that our competitors face.
Kiosk Products
Gordon-Darby has developed and implemented many technical advances in pursuit of our corporate goal of being the premier I/M contractor. This includes a number of kiosk-type products aimed at improving the delivery of decentralized vehicle emissions and waiver issuance services.
Gordon-Darby developed and trademarked the RIMS™ (Remote Inspection Monitoring System) test technology, which involves remote oversight of OBDII kiosk inspections conducted in either decentralized or centralized inspection networks, and data exchange between the remote test kiosks and a centralized database.
Other Inspection & Maintenance Products
In addition to its other activities, Gordon-Darby continues to work on developing new vehicle inspection related products that are designed to complement our testing and program management services.
Non-Dynamometer-Based Transient Emissions Testing: TransMass™, a low-cost software-based testing approach, was developed by Gordon-Darby to predict mass emissions during a transient drive cycle (e.g., the IM240). This patented approach to transient emissions testing uses BAR97-type equipment to determine mass emissions scores without the need to measure total exhaust flow. States can use this solution to generate near-IM240 SIP credits.
VIN Decoding: We developed the Gordon-Darby VIN decoder by analyzing millions of records from our I/M programs as well as large datasets of additional vehicle identification information obtained from other sources. The resulting database system has been deployed in Gordon-Darby programs to fill in almost all required vehicle information at the beginning of each test based on the VIN entered by the inspector, regardless of whether an online or offline test is being conducted. VIN decoder content is also being expanded on an ongoing basis as additional information is collected during its use in programs such as New Hampshire where vehicles not included in traditional emissions inspection programs (e.g., farm vehicles and trailers) are now being inspected and adding to our decoded VIN database system.
OBD PID Fingerprinting: Gordon-Darby developed and implemented a custom OBDII “fingerprinting” technique that enables advanced clean scanning identification. This proprietary methodology analyzes many more parameters than proposed by others in order to accurately identify (fingerprint) actual test vehicles down to the sub-model level. The resulting fingerprint is then compared to reference fingerprints contained in a database assembled from millions of OBDII test records in Gordon-Darby programs, all of which have involved the collection of the parametric information needed to build the OBDII fingerprint database. The end result is the most complete method available, short of the collection of an electronic OBDII VIN, for detecting incidences of illegal clean scanning.