Patent 7448202 was granted and assigned to Denso on November, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A secondary air supply system includes a supply passage, a valve, and a detecting unit. Secondary air is supplied to the upstream of a purification apparatus in an exhaust passage of an engine through the supply passage. The valve communicates and blocks the supply passage to be in open and close conditions. The detecting unit detects a detection object of secondary air in the upstream of the valve in the supply passage. A diagnosis apparatus for the secondary air supply system includes a diagnosis unit that obtains a detection result of the detecting unit in each of the open and close conditions of the valve for evaluating an abnormity of the secondary air supply system in accordance with the detection result. The diagnosis apparatus includes a reliability maintaining unit that determines the diagnosis operation of the diagnosis unit to be valid when the detecting operations in the open and close conditions are continuously performed.