im thinking about moving to cali, and i was wondering how hard it is to get around the emissions laws with a modified car? i have an obd2 car (not an evo), with an obd1 motor and ecu swap. the car also runs a full 3in exhaust with no cats. im trying to decide if i should take the car with me when i move, or not. i keep hearing horror stories about how strict cali is, and i dont want to end up with a car that i cant drive on the street.

 

It really depends on a couple things: does your car look like a rice rocket, where you get pulled over, and do you have a way to pass smog.

If your car is pretty riced out and you get pulled over in some place like Milpitas, you might be asked to pop the hood of your car. Most of the time though, the cops will just give you the ticket for whatever it was you were doing and let you on your way.

For smog, CA is extremely strict. So if your car needs to pass the smog test, you'll need to find someone who can help get you passed :-p

 

i guess what im wondering is how easy it is to find a shop that could help me out, while being new to the area.

as far as the cars looks, its not riced out, but you can tell its not stock. then again, most people have no idea what it is in the first place, so maybe i can pass it off as stock..lol
click here if you want to check out the car
http://6gc.net/members/lagos

 

I haven't lived in Cali for years and never lived there when I was legal to drive, but isn't there a law that says you can't swap an engine into a car if the engine is older than the car?

 

i think there is. hence why im worried. the obd2 port doesn't work at all, so even if i tried to put 10 cats on the car and be smog legal, the car would still fail. jdm motors also have no egr valve.

 

can you keep the car registered in PA? Not sure how that would work, but if you keep your PA license, registration, and insurance how can they say anything to you.

 

yeah thats true, i could do that, but PA inspection runs out in december, so it wouldnt buy me too much time.

 

It's ~$2000 for every cat they don't find on your car if you get pulled over in California.

 

Nice looking car - I always hate that we never got the st205 gt4 over here. A 94 Gt was my first car and I wished it was one of those every day.

It's going to be very hard to get a car to pass without an obd2 readiness check. There are some people who have tossed around the idea of making some fake readiness boxes that go right into the port, but I dunno if it ever happened. You might find an inspection station that will hook you up but it's going to be rough.

GL man.

 

Buy a cat and gut it. I would also suggest you tone your engine bay down a bit more. Black paint, black couplers. If you ever get pulled over and your hood is popped, you will get reffed. Most of the time a cop wont even look under the car unless you were caught street racing. You will definitely need a hook up on smog to pass.

I remember your car on alltrac.net I believe. I miss those days.

 

Cops in SoCal know what a catless car smells like. So i'd get a high flow one....

 

ouch. i guess it IS as bad as they say.

nice to see there are some celica guys on here. they are great cars, but get very little recognition in the car scene.

 

whats up lagos, i just moved out here a couple of months ago and i have a evo that put me in a similar situation to yours. my motor is built i run ems, full catles, etc, etc and i was nervus as hell. or in norcalian 'i was hella nervus yo!' but fortunately i was able to keep my evo registered in my mothers name. my home state isnt to strict on emisions because we dont have any enforcment on them. but you should do everything you can to keep it registered. but theres a couple of shops i can recomend you to.

Speed Element for realy nice parts, think of it as the target vs walmart

EIP for random stuff and big projects including custom bodywork

here is a link to the thread that i found on norcal evo

http://www.norcalevo.net/forum/index...c,21045.0.html

ps change all your couplers to black if your moving out here