Smog in Cali

You are mistaken. The rolling 30 year rule that exempted older cars was recinded by our state a couple of years ago. I believe it is 1975 (maybe 1974)vehicles and older that are exempt. One of the reasons the law was recinded, was that 1975 was the first year for catalytic converters in the state of Calif and it was madatory for all new vehicles sold in this state.

Ah, you're right. It's still '75 and older... that sucks.

darkside03gt said:

got any tricks for passing? just wundering because eventually i want to make some seriouse power with ported heads stage 1 cams and about 14psi on my vortech. i was gona swap my pulleys for the inspection. but like i said got any tips?

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as long as you are tuned and have the factory midpipe installed you will usually pass with flying colors.

if the tune is off, or if you have even high-flow cats, you will likely fail. even if the tune is perfect and you have high-flows, still probably fail, two high-flow cats for legal purposes just cannot scrub like 4 stockers can.


last year when i sold my 03 Cobra (then bought it back but thats another story) the buyer told me up and down the bank didnt need a smog cert to transfer title, i even called them and they said they didnt either. car had Bassani high-flow catted Xpipe and catback, 2.8" pulley and idlers with a amazon tune. i shouldve listened to my gut instinct to swap my H from the GT on and smog it anyways, but instead i listened to them, made the drive to do the deal, and we start signing papers and the bank manager comes and asks for smog certs. we then drive to the only open smog shop and put the car up, luckily the tech didnt mind the "underhood scenery", though he cant change the sniffer. it failed. horribly. took the car out, ran her hard to warm up the cats as much as possible, put her on the dyno for 10 minutes at 3500rpm, tried again, no such luck, still failed. we continued the paperwork process and i left the car with him so he could get it "taken care of" which he found a buddies stock H pipe, swapped it over, and guess what, the car passed beautifully, flying colors and all that jazz.