ok i wanted to know if i had a car sound pre catalytic converter welded in to the down pipe would it make my car smog legal? Would i still get the gains?

 

you cant have both. either free flow and cel/illegal or cat and backpressure.

 

I guess as long as you have the 1 7/8 cats in, the rest doesn't help much anyway. The resriction is still there. Maybe all I will end up doing to my exhaust is a muffler or catback. Maybe header, if I don't mind swapping it out every year.

 

every year?...i thought it was every two?...and in sure there are people on these forums that know how, who and where you can pass your smog for a slight tip....

i dont so please dont pm me...but there are ways...

 

this is how you get by smog, when the guy asks you to leave your registration on the passenger seat slip a $50 underneath it. if he doesnt pass you, demand where the money went. if he accuses you of bribery say you forgot it was there. legally its bulletproof. if he doesnt pass you and doesnt take the $50, go someplace else. my experience has been the smog testers really dont like their job. bu that may just be the east coast. i know you cali-folk have all kinds of crazy righteous CARB tree huggers so its really a judgement call. if the tester has a big tree tattoo on his arm keep the bill in your wallet.

 

if i had a pre converter installed in my down pipe would i still get a gain in hp?

 

why is it if you change your header its not legal? i don't understand why its illegal to change them.

 

In this case, I believe it's because one of the Lancer's converters is attached to the bottom of the header, where it meets the downpipe.

Aftermarket header, means no more cat, means CEL, means failing smog.

 

oh i see now so why doesnt rrm or someone make a smog legal header to eliminate this problem?

 

Because of the cat. The reason a header works well for the Lancer is because the cat ends up being removed, thus freeing a sizable amount of exhaust flow.

If RRM made a header to house the stock cat, it wouldn't really be any different than the stock headers in the first place.

 

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...u&pagenumber=2

The how and the why.

 

I know SOMEONE (don't ask) who claims his relative will pass anyone for the right price, but I'd rather not go that route. And you're right, it's every 2 years... which means I'm coming up in 6 months. Time to bug RMR for their carb sticker if they have one yet.

 

It's always been my expierience from owning later model hot rods and muscle cars with V8's all these years, that many aftermarket performance goodies could in fact pass emissions. The problem surfaces in the manufacturer doing the math to see if it would be worth it to go through the process to get their product CARB certified.

If you notice, most certified parts cost quite a bit more than a non legal equivalent, yet don't appear to be built any different. The extra money is basically going to pay for the product being certed, and the cold, hard fact of supply and demand. Most people in the USA don't need to worry about buying legal parts, so certed parts are sold to only a few people, hence the higher cost to keep that product on the market.

A header company could in fact come up with a header that would accept either a stock cat moved down the line a little, or a higher flowing one that would still pass an emissions test, and then jump through all the hoops to get it certed and throw it out there on the market. The problem would be the cost to get it to market would be so high and the projected sales would require a cost that most would not pay.

Think about it, how many Mitsu, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, etc., people are content to just run illegal stuff now and just take it off or find an illegal come smog time. Hell, the Honda market has gotten big enough now that there is a ton of legal stuff out there and yet there are still a ton of Honda guys running illegal stuff. I was in the super market last night prowling the magazine rack while the wife was doing the isle circuit, and noticed in the new Import Tuner there was a listing of 50 state legal products and I think 90% of them were for Hondas. There were some for Mitsu's though, so you might want to check it out if it's an issue for you.

In the end, it's not just legal performance mods for the Lancer that aren't available, compared to other makes there's hardly any kind of mods available for the Lancer. However, as the market grows, hopefully the holes will be filled with products that are reasonably priced and are worth a damn.

To be fair, I'm 36 and new to the whole import thing, but I've owned cars and built custom **** since I was 14 and have been up and down the smog road many times. It's always the same story. I miss the days when illegals for $50 bucks were a dime a dozen.

On a side not, what about porting a stock exhaust manifold and coming up with a cat from maybe another brand of car that would flow better and at least still look OG and still pass emissions. Just a thought.

Damn, sorry if I rambled.

 

Actually, that was a better post than 99% of what I see on a daily basis. As for what urban said, don't new CA cars get smogged after 4 years, and THEN every 2 years after? I could've sworn that was it. I've had my Lancer for two years since October (got it in Oct 01) and haven't received anything from the DMV regarding a smog test.

 

Thanks for the link Pjal