Isn't speedelement up in SF? They seem to be a legit Evo shop, they might be able to give you some direction on where to go up North. Driving from Fresno to LA seems a bit far for tuning and services.

Edit - I just mapped it, going to SF only saves like 30-40 miles from driving to LA. Hopefully you can find a competent evo shop around you.

 

Unfortunately, we are limited. There are only two shops in our area that I'd trust for mechanical work. Nobody for tuning, though. Definitely nobody that would know how to reconfigure an ECU to pass CA smog. These care are becoming pretty specialized, at this point. It's so bad, I thought about opening one up

 

Oof that really sucks! Not a bad idea about opening a shop if there's a market there. Do it Kaj!!!!!

 

Yeah it is far for tunes and service but where I live that’s my only option. I always tell myself hey you wanted to this car so you gotta deal with the headaches. 🤷🏻‍♂️ You know it’s bad when the closet Mitsubishi dealership shuts down their service department 😂 so I’m with kaj either I work on my car or find a shop that has experience working on Evo’s so LA it is. I’m more familiar with LA then SF.

 

I wish. I helped run a shop a while back that would have done well, but the owner got nervous during the winter and shut down. We had a solid customer base to keep doors open while we found "fun" projects to do We also had a monopoly on alignments in the area and access to the local midget racing crowd. I was seriously bummed.
Fresno is a tough place to do performance stuff because everyone has a "my boi" that can it for cheaper. They all want stuff done for $20 and to use eBay parts Our shop only charged $80/hr and STILL had trouble getting those guys to bring their cars in.
To do decent here, you would have to do a ton of maintenance work to keep the doors open in between the few and far performance jobs.
A guy I know has a shop that's doing REALLY well, but that's because he got hooked up with the exotics crowd. Those guys never low ball LOL

 

I put my car back to stock many years ago after minor bolt ons and a tune. Is there a way to check if these numbers match using an ODBII reader or Tactrix adapter? I'm trying to figure out if the stock tune I flashed years ago is going to cause me trouble this year when I get smogged or not. I was last smogged 8/2019, so right before all this started. I'm not noted as needed a referee on the DMV website as of now.

Edit: I found somewhere online that you can check CalID and CVN using an ODBII reader... but the next problem is how do we know what the right values are? Is there a table somewhere?

 

hi ,i also live in ca,recently went to smog my car at star station and they can not smog my car because the monitor on the smog machine have a message pop up say my car need to go see ref for inspection.-i did check on the bar web site and found i got check yes on both star station and ref .but it did not say it in my registration renewal notice in the mail
talk to the ref on the phone /he said ,they been monitor my car since last time i did pass smog with tune ecu.now this year same thing ecu was tune and it not stock tune they want me to take my car to the dealer and reflash back to stock and get a paper work from the dealer and also tell me change everything back to stock before come to see ref and make sure all monitor is ready.
i just want to tell everyone that has a car tune or mod your evo and have to smog this year be ready!!!
because my will not pass untill i have a complete oem engine /all under hood oem parts ,and reflash back to stock .i planned nonoperation for now. spent a lot of times and money enjoy this car for 14 years /so,maybe it time to rest .
i have 2.3 l rpm engine.bushur racing.

2.3 l rpm bushur racing /state3 head /440 hp e85 tune by fftech ,CA

 

I feel for you guys. That's why my car looks like this (it's pretty much stock) and still almost makes as much power as the "flashy" cars. If I fee like bringing the car back to CA, all I gotta do is swap injectors to run my OEM tune. Hopefully the ECU gurus can find a way to match up ECUs to their proper settings.

 

You went to a STAR station with your engine looking like that? No wonder, I mean the ecu stuff aside there are so many violations there I don't know how you would even get them to hook up your car. Usually they do a pre-visual and will tell you to forget about it because they know you will fail the visual and they don't want it to hurt their numbers. Too many fails is counted against them. I see many violations just from your pic so... yeah i dunno. California is a different kind of modding game now and the strategy for playing is not easy mode anymore. Maybe it was never "easy mode", that might be places like Florida etc, but its def on a whole new difficulty level now.

I'm sorry you gotta go through this though, I'm sure its gonna be rough getting everything back to stock for the ref.

 

idk man....i know a local guy who just paid the VIP fee and got it smogged; e85 evo X....month later checked the site and it came up as passed

So that gave me hope! even though at this point i dont worry about smog #stocklife

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Also some other news....a buddy of mine has a self built 2.3 w/ a fp black (iirc) and he recently registered in south dakota thru a company by simply paying a fee....

and i recently stumbled on this article;
https://www.thedrive.com/news/34366/...-registrations

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"VIP Fee" What a nice euphemism. Well it's not what you know, its who you know. Bribing the right people is clearly a workable strategy. There are many ways to play the game. Although Gluck with the mobile checkpoints they sometimes like to do.

 

With all the internet articles like that being circulated.. it won't be be long before California puts a stop to all of it. They have obviously been paying attention enough to start checking ECUs. CA is diligent and unforgiving with their vehicle registrations... imagine if they put that much effort into something useful.

 

related-ish question - if you move from out of state, is there any way they're going to stop you if you keep your registration out of state?

 

When I moved back from Oregon, CHP told me they *could*, at best cite me or, at worst, impound my vehicle for having a CA license and OR plates/reg. Scare tactic, most likely, but I wasn't going to push my luck. He said to get it rectified because I only "get one freebie". He made it sound like they keep track. Again, possible scare tactic. I've learned to take anything a field officer says with a grain of salt because they have no idea what they are talking about 50% of the time.