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Year 2 owning a FieST in California... CARB sucks. New to the forum!

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GingerST

GingerST

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Thread Starter #21
I think CARB started with some great intentions but got lost along the way. Make sure people's cars aren't barfing soot? Great! Make sure everyone has a catalytic converter? Awesome! Ticket someone because their Cobb intake was approved for 2016, but not 2017? That's ridiculous. Just bring back the sniffer tests and get rid of the visual bullshit other than verifying catalysts are intact and there's no diverting of harmful gases, but failing smog because an OEM rubber hose was replaced with an aftermarket silicone/metal one? That's pretty nitpicky.

Full disclosure - in my youth I did my fair share of disreputable things that weren't great for the environment, but I got better as I got smarter.
Exactly, I agree with a lot of the environmental laws surrounding vehicles in California, but the problem with CARB is it has become more than just about the environment, especially now that a car running a non OEM tune won't pass smog. For the most part, any piece of equipment that adds horsepower is reason enough for not passing a smog. Of course unless it has an executive order.
 


Clint Beastwood

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#22
Exactly, I agree with a lot of the environmental laws surrounding vehicles in California, but the problem with CARB is it has become more than just about the environment, especially now that a car running a non OEM tune won't pass smog. For the most part, any piece of equipment that adds horsepower is reason enough for not passing a smog. Of course unless it has an executive order.
Well to be fair, the crackdown on tunes can probably be blamed on the coal-rollers :|
 


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#25
I work in the racing industry, and yes, my ST is modded, but I can change it back to a stock tune and "close enough to pass" without too much work. Having grown up in L.A. in the 70s, I can see why California has the strictest smog laws. The L.A. Basin is a unique landscape that has a big ridge of mountains all around us forming a bowl where everyone lives, and on-shore breeze that keeps all of the smog we produce in that bowl without any place to go. And, we've got a massive concentration of cars, usually idling in traffic, in that bowl. Before cars had polution control, you couldn't see a mile away on some days, and most kids who played outside had asthma. It's a lot better these days.

That being said, cars in general run clean enough these days that it would seem that we could back off the rules to match the rest of the country. But, good luck with that, now that everyone who loves the rules are the people who don't mod cars.

I read an article recently that said that cars run clean enough now that the worse polluters in the Southern California area are fast food restaurants. Crap, now they're going after the guys who make my lunch!
 


Clint Beastwood

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#26
I work in the racing industry, and yes, my ST is modded, but I can change it back to a stock tune and "close enough to pass" without too much work. Having grown up in L.A. in the 70s, I can see why California has the strictest smog laws. The L.A. Basin is a unique landscape that has a big ridge of mountains all around us forming a bowl where everyone lives, and on-shore breeze that keeps all of the smog we produce in that bowl without any place to go. And, we've got a massive concentration of cars, usually idling in traffic, in that bowl. Before cars had polution control, you couldn't see a mile away on some days, and most kids who played outside had asthma. It's a lot better these days.

That being said, cars in general run clean enough these days that it would seem that we could back off the rules to match the rest of the country. But, good luck with that, now that everyone who loves the rules are the people who don't mod cars.

I read an article recently that said that cars run clean enough now that the worse polluters in the Southern California area are fast food restaurants. Crap, now they're going after the guys who make my lunch!
Oh man, the smog that parked up against the mountains out in redlands is pretty ridiculous even now, but 15-20 years or even longer ago? The sky was *brown* out there.
 


Dpro

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#27
Oh man, the smog that parked up against the mountains out in redlands is pretty ridiculous even now, but 15-20 years or even longer ago? The sky was *brown* out there.
Thats because all our smog blows eastward. I will never forgot being in Ontario on the 10 on a summer afternoon and the San Gabriels are like right there ( within a mile or two ) and all you could see was this White backdrop no mountains.
 


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#28
One thing I haven’t done to my car is a down pipe, mainly due to the hassle of swapping it at smog check time.

Actually a blessing in disguise. Now that your catalytic converter will be stolen if you park outside for more than five minutes, at least ours are too hard to get to 😊
 


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#29
One thing I haven’t done to my car is a down pipe, mainly due to the hassle of swapping it at smog check time.

Actually a blessing in disguise. Now that your catalytic converter will be stolen if you park outside for more than five minutes, at least ours are too hard to get to 😊
Ha! We should get an insurance discount for having it protected with a built-in anti-theft device!

As for air quality and cleaner skies, I'm all for it as I was born in Mexico City (it was much worse than LA in the 80's) and you could feel your eyes watering and would have breathing difficulties as soon as you got there. What they implemented to "clean it up" was to assign colors to your license plates based on then have days when you could not drive. That didn't work for long as people just bought a cheap car to drive on the days that you couldn't drive the other one. The air is much cleaner now but I do think it relates to cars themselves being a lot less polluting.

The point I'm trying to get to, finally, is that I agree with Clint in that sometimes regulations get created with good intentions and work but then they never get revised, as with everything, everybody has a different opinion based on their interests. We as people that love cars and consider them more than just a tool to get to a destination think totally opposite to the people that just want to get to point B and the first thing that they want to get rid of is the evil internal combustion cars from hell, all of them!

Anyway, welcome GingerST!
 


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#30
Ha! We should get an insurance discount for having it protected with a built-in anti-theft device!
I found an easier solution for my work van, which sits outside my shop in a bad neighborhood, and just had its cat stolen. Rather than just replace the cat and wait for it to be stolen again, I rebuilt the exhaust system with a straight pipe in place of the cat, which I can slide in for the next smog check. I also wrote "Whatcha Gonna Steal Now, Bitch?" on the pipe. Hell, they'll probably get mad enough to smash the windshield.

But, I digress.

Yeah, when I was a kid, we had smog alerts on the really bad days, and weren't allowed to have recess outside.

If I do my math correctly, my 2015 ST will be up for it's first smog check next year or the year after. I've read up enough to know how to do a drive cycle to get the ECU to "forget" the tune after I flash it back to stock, and if I replace the Cobb cold air with the stock intake, it should pass a visual. If my smog guy doesn't retire in the next year or two, thankfully he's too lazy to get under the car to look at things like aftermarket intercooler pipes. I doubt that a black metal pipe that's a little wider than stock would draw enough attention to identify it as non-OEM anyway.
 


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