Artifex

I was chatting with alphajesse, and it occurred to me that there would be some value in making a formal posting on how to deal with smog inspections that performance users will face. I intend this to be a survey of the different options available to people, and not as a sure fire method of passing.

I want to state for legal reasons that this is not an endorsement of violating state emissions laws. I leave it up to the user to make their own choices, keeping in mind that there are legal and ecological consequences to circumventing emissions devices.

Passing smog is a concern of both N/A and F/I cars. Most of the content here will be Honda specific, although I suppose you can apply this to anything. There are 3 different domains that are of concern, and I will give an overview of each one and possible solutions. Some of these 3 domains may not apply to you, depending on which state you live in.

Visual
The visual inspection, as far as I am aware, only applies to residents of Cailfornia. Users from other states can skip this and read the next section. In CA, emissions rules are controlled by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). A visual inspection can be done by police officers on the street, or official smog refs designated by the state. In CA, it is legal for police to search your car whenever they want, and I believe drivers cannot refuse this request (it is an offense to refuse). The only area for concern are engine modifications; transmission and suspensions mods don't affect emissions, and generally CARB doesn't care about them.

The goal here is to be very low key in how you upgrade your car. There are some upgrades that can't be detected by visual inspection, such as internal engine mods or ECU upgrades. The mods that are the most likely to fail are turbo kits and exhaust modifications, because they really can't be hidden in any way. For the most part, if it can't be seen by looking, you won't have trouble with the Visual.

Another major option is to buy upgrades that are approved by CARB. Aftermarket companies, if they pay money and go through state testing, can ask CARB to approve their products for street use. Unfortunately, there aren't many CARB approved products. Some of the ones that are available suck (IMO), so that's no good either. Generally, it is rare to find one that is CARB approved and useful. It's all a big racket really, it's another method for the state to rubber stamp stuff by extorting money from the aftermarket.

The last thing I will mention is a dirty trick you can pull (if you are lucky). I am not endorsing this method, but it may work. You can find the little CARB approval badge which comes with approved aftermarket parts. If you take this badge and duplicate it, you can apply it to your current parts setup. This will fake out the police, but it will not get you past CA smog refs.

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Ken

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