Passing Smog in SoCal with mods

FL 4Motion

I find this interesting, Cali sounds like Audi corporate, whenever you go in for service, they pull all your ecu and tcu data and look for evidence of a tune even if you flashed back to stock, they can see out of whack fuel pressure, timing changes etc and then you get the dreaded TD1 code which for VAG guys means your warranty is now kaput and some dealerships won’t even work on your car for fear of running afoul of the epa, carb.

But, with regards to carb and ecu tuned but put back to stock vehicles, what’s to say you were running your car tuned on the track, then reverted back to stock for the street. Even the epa, and carb I think too, says it’s legal to convert a street car into a nonstreet Legal race car/track car. Logically then, what’s to prevent you from reverting it back to being street legal? I’d be curious to see what an attorney would have to say about that.

Then again, Fvck that sh1t, Cali is just too difficult, move or buy a faster car and leave it stock or close to stock. I guess the epa and Cali esp only want rich folks to be able to go fast. So much for the democratization of speed. Classic socialism, working class and middle class get squeezed but the rich stay rich and privileged, (and in this case, faster than all you peasants).

redondoaveb

The EPA came out with the new regulations so a street car cannot be converted into a race car. That is the basis for the tune regulation. But yes, you could have an ecutek tune and reflash the factory tune when you go in for smog test but if they see any signs that the ecu has been manipulated, you'll fail and have to have it inspected by a referee.

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Fast Intentions "Stage Seb" twin turbo #098- Specialty Z/Tial-Xonarotor/CJM/Ecutek/HKS/KW/SPL/Hotchkis/Rohana/Toyo
700+whp

FL 4Motion

Interesting, I could have sworn when I perused the most recent EPA regs that there is still a carve out for converting street cars into non street legal race cars exclusively for the track. SEMA brought a lawsuit a few years ago to get this carve out bc otherwise ALL aftermarket car parts would have become illegal overnight.

Regardless, if EPA or CARB actually was only motivated by wanting cleaner air (which btw I’m all for personally), and not some socialist political agenda to push us away from POVs, then the ONLY thing that matters would be a sniffer test. After all, the only thing that hurts the environment is the tailpipe emissions, not the computer programming in your ecu. That would be a common sense practical application of clean air laws.

redondoaveb

I agree with you about emissions. What they should do which makes too much sense that they won't do it is if you modify your car, it should have to pass a sniffer test instead of the obd test. And even if there were some kind of surcharge, that would be fine too. My car still has cats and I run e85. Probably runs cleaner than a stock z.

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Fast Intentions "Stage Seb" twin turbo #098- Specialty Z/Tial-Xonarotor/CJM/Ecutek/HKS/KW/SPL/Hotchkis/Rohana/Toyo
700+whp

FL 4Motion

Yup, most good tunes that still maintain the cats actually run as clean or cleaner than stock but I suppose it’s not politically correct to “encourage” souping up cars anymore

threeseventy

Flashing back to stock with uprev would apparently delete the tune forever/require full retuning due to uprev software changes over the years, so the solution is a secondary ECU from eBay with stock tune and one of the fobs reprogrammed to match it. Back to the tuned ECU for track days.