CA Smog... ugh!

Lumps
1

Hey guys,

Long time since I’ve been on the LUMP forum, hope everyone is doing well. I haven’t been able to use my conversion for the past year or so due to CA smog rules - the local shady guy who was sleazy-smogging my car closed up shop and it’s been a real challenge to find another soul who will do it for me. Has anyone in the LA area have access to a guy who would help me out?

It’s a real shame… the LT1 motor is probably way cleaner than the original XJ6 motor… but I can’t get it to smog without a whole rigmorale of certification and inspection… which I’d like to avoid!

2

Durn, Tyler, I feel your pain. The place that passed my car last year after one refused to, closed also!

You suppose the BAR spies got each of them! I strongly suspect so.

In my case, my car’s dyno numbers are just fine. But, it fluked the subjective “snap throttle” test. It smokes black. No doubt about it. Laid up for now on non-op. Other life issues to resolve.

In your case, why not just bite and get the special referee inspection and be done, at least for a while. Just pick an LT1 “donor” and check for the required emmsion gear and install it, if not present. Air pump, EGR, exhaust, etc.

Carl.

3

If your engine is that clean, it should easily pass smog. Have you even tried to get the proper certification?

4

If only it were that simple. Of course, it is not. Bar has more complex rules than a mere clean “sniff”.
The tests are designed for a specific car. Ie, 95 Camaro. Others of course, So, the sniff must meet the level for that car, the donor. So far, OK? Not realy. Limited variable, only. Approved after market parts, as cat converters, air filters, etc.

And, all original emision stuff that the donor had must be present.

Never mind, that a properly tuned LT! as an example can sniff clean sans air injection. There is a factory delete for some. Nevertheless the pump must be there. Other than clutter, it is reasonably acceptable. Electric driven. On for a very few minutes on start, then becomes baggage.

Never mind the subjective “snap throttle” test !!!

Carlt

5

Yeah, that was one of the issues I never wanted to bother with - the stupid SMOG pump, which was actually deemed by GM to be deleteable. Nonetheless, the pump has to be mounted and present, along with the pipes to the manifolds (which I never bothered to install since I didn’t want to deal with the SMOG pump.)

Aside from that, yes, the catalytic converters are a problem. California requires that you have a special, much more expensive catalytic converter than the rest of the country requires, and our LT1’s require two of them. Annoying! Plus, I’m sure even with a non california approved catalytic converter my LT1 engine is miles cleaner than the original XJ6 engine. Especially when you consider my car has been tuned and has a 6 speed manual transmission… I routinely get 30+mpg highway (in a V8 that weighs 4800lbs that’s nothing to sneeze at).

C’est la vie, I suppose. I’m enjoying my 72 TR6… no smog, no muss, no fuss!! Plus I converted it to FI and a 5 speed so my mileage is now almost as good as my Honda Civic and it starts up on first crank, every time.

6

CA smog rules have nothing to do with logic! I have done more than 100 dyno pulls on a variety of hot rod engines that burned clean because they were well tuned - proper tuning is almost the last thing on a bureaucrats mind, they are most interested in checking off boxes on a form designed by another bureaucrat. They are not interested in low emissions per se, more like they want the assurance of a package that will maintain acceptable emissions for the next 100,000 miles with little to no maintenance. The one thing you cannot guarantee to the smog referees is that your selected brew of aftermarket parts and tuning will keep its integrity over the next 100,000 miles - which is why they want your engine swapped car to have all of the equipment of the donor car. They believe in those factory original emissions equipment parts because they were certified in tests that you cannot replicate.

This is why 1974 and earlier cars are desired by California enthusiasts who need not worry about testing - although if California wants to get sticky they could force owner’s of 1974 and earlier cars to install the smog pumps that were jettisoned years ago and have those cars go through emission testing and inspection. I do not know the ins and outs of California’s current requirements - but I do know that at various times California legislators have pushed bills that would have required emissions testing and compliance on cars all the way back to 1960!

7

Now you know why I did not keep my first Jaguar Lump, a '74 SII 383/700R… having to deal with the smog issues was a real pain. It had all the required pieces but still had a carb and smog pump with all the related piping… real dual exhaust “bothered them”.

Figured out that getting one model older, S1 from 1969-1973, solves the problem… smog exempt.

It is bad enough I have to deal with them with my 2015 Ram 1500 Ecodiesel. All they do is a visual inspection for their smog money.

8

Hah, they even want me to smog my Honda Civic Hybrid, can you believe that?!

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Ha! I know Cali is a beautiful place, but I have more than a few friends who have fled not just due to this craziness…

10

Yeah, Bob. Not only craziness, but $'s. Huge real estate costs. The distance between live and work has steadily increased.

And, now, a legislator wants cars to be all electric by 2040. The grid will have to change a lot, as well as the average house.

Carl

11

Cali in 2040…I can only imagine how much more screwed up that it will become. Right now the biggest group of people exiting Ca are middle class families with children, because it is simply too expensive to cover the costs of raising a family in Ca on average incomes. I’m suspicious that Ca just became a “Sanctuary State” (at start of 2018 its official) because there is no other way to fill all the low wage jobs - because the only way to live in Ca on low wages is to be willing to live in very substandard housing or perhaps by craming 20 or so people into the average home (I think the average single family home rent in Ca is somewhere ~ $3,500 or more in all but the most outlying areas. It seems like every home improvement store in Ca has a line of “Day Laborers” hanging outside. And I believe that the Ca restaurant industry, farming industry, and construction industry have basically said that without “sanctuary” employees that they would practically go out of business.

Ca definitely has some beautiful areas and many great attractions, which are best enjoyed as a visitor passing through.

The funny thing about Ca emissions laws is that they perversely restrict logic when it comes to how clean an individual car might be (despite well tuned modifications and even the elimination of some of the inefficient “smog” equipment) while leaving untested the poisonous environmental effect of their strange brew of MBTE reformulated California fuel. So while they can claim progress in cleaner air, they are ignoring the travesty that they are inflicting on their underground aquifers. This means that Ca has to import or transfer over long distance fresh water not entirely because of increasing population - but because they have rendered some of their natural underground water too poisoned to even be treatable by purification. You go Cali!

12

I agree that the state certainly has overreached, but by and large its a byproduct of longtime residents who have voted in certain policies which have compounded and are now coming home to roost. However, I think a lot of California’s governmental overreach stems from our massive population. When you have 40 million people, some freedoms have to be curtailed, sadly. Same goes for housing… cities have all the jobs, yet they are the most restrictive and expensive to build new housing in… so California finds itself in a tough spot.

Plus, the air concerns were very real back in the 1970s and 1980s; while I personally never experienced the worst of it, I have seen pictures, read stories and I am glad there are certain restrictions in place. If there wasn’t California, the auto manufacturers would have been less inclined to add emissions equipment. That’s not to say the untold damage being done to our aquifer system is to be ignored; my best friend from high school is a hydrological engineer who works for the state and has told me some very, very scary stories about the future of water here. But I guess that gives desalinization a chance to grow and boom.

Not saying I don’t think there is a common sense approach to handling situations such as our own! The volume of cars like ours which the BAR has to “inspect” has to be so low, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be handled on a case by case basis… or just SMOG the sucker at the approved station and if it passes it passes!

13

No such thing as common sense in California legislation and policymaking. I cannot think of anywhere else in the U.S. that combines the most liberal of social policies with the most conservative low density housing construction rules. It takes years for any new home construction to get approved in the population and employment centers, and even then only after the developer agrees to build fewer units.

California does not care about your old collector car being able to pass emissions. You do know that Jerry Brown is an avowed car hater who blames the automobile for the problems of urban sprawl - never mind all rules against higher density housing! When he was governer in the '70’s he proudly vetoed every single proposal to add lanes to highways or to even add new highways. Why you ask? Because he firmly believed that if you made it hard to drive around that people would cluster in cities and use mass transportation. Meanwhile the suburbs surrounding all the major areas wouldn’t allow the density that Jerry’s utopian dream required.

(facetiously) Who would have thought that would culminate into the current situation? Nah, going to be paradise baby!

14

Yeah, I read a book recently, about Interstate 11 which goes into several logical fallacies regarding the ceasing of Interstate construction; in Los Angeles proper, I can understand that rising costs due to property rights would make new routes unfeasable (like the 710 gap, the 110 gap, the portion of 170 which was never built, the portion of the 71 which was never built), but in rural/remote areas (like the stretch between Phoenix and Las Vegas) there is no reason other than ideology to stop a good idea.

Environmentalists love to go on tirades about saving a certain plant or animal population, saving the air, saving the water, etc… but if cars and trucks have to burn thousands of excess gallons of fuel each year to detour and reroute through the Inland Empire/High Desert, isn’t it all a net loss, especially over the aggregate of many years and thousands upon thousands of vehicles? Let alone that these are two of the fastest growing metroplexes in the American Southwest!

But anyways… off topic now… As a resident of Los Angeles, I gotta take the lumps with the… well the lumps I suppose! It all comes down to what you want out of where you live; since my work (for the time being) has compelled me to stay, the enjoyments and pleasures of this state outweigh the annoyances. Options for food & entertainment can’t be beat here… and neither can general opportunity.

15

Tyler, you will like this: when the 5 Freeway was being designed some 60 years ago one lone voice on the board overseeing the project firmly believed that an additional 50’ of right of way should be purchased beyond the initial proposal in the “rural” areas. “Why” asked the fellow board members, to which he replied "someday you will need it, people and development are coming this way. At the time it was just country land and farms with no real development, so the additional land was not bought. Then 40 years later with SoCal bursting at the seams around the 5 freeway, especially in Orange County, they did undertake a widening of the 5 freeway. Of course they had to buy up all the commercial and residential buildings that were butting up against the old 5 freeway and pay for the relocation of residents and businesses- at a multi billion dollar cost and many additional years of construction. I can almost guarantee that even in those highly developed metro areas, they will finally be so choked up traffic wise that the same scenario will play out again - we’ll see what California voters do when it becomes a trillion dollar bond issue and brings more toll roads.

16

Didnt CA phase out the use of MTBE about 2003-2005?

17

Yeah, that is my recollection. Awful stuff, intended to make gas burn cleaner. If contained, just maybe.
But, in the real world, many tanks at Service Stations leaked !! The stuff entered the aquifers!!!

A campaign resulted, many tanks flunked. forced remediation. Most if not all pulled, ground “cleansed”. some replaced, but with elaborate monitoring systems. Some came in fiberglass. Yahoo, it does not rust. Oh, crap, the bond fails!

In my former career, I investigated many “pollution” claims. Lots of bad stuff from many sources entered the aquifers. Silicon valley folks use some powerful stuff.

War story I. One facility had an underground tank. Waste “stuff” was dumped there. presumably to be pumped out and safely disposed of?? A careful log was kept. It showed no entry for removals. But, the amount deposited exceeded the capacity of the tank!!! Destination ???

War Story II. An entrepreneur decided he was capable of the install of a replacement fiberglass tank. Complete with monitoring equipment. Yipes, not long after, alarms sounded. Excavation found the tank leakd badly at a seam. Fiberglass. Of course, the maker claimed improper installation. the fight was on.

Dry clening establishments used an ocious stuff. much spillage. guess what.

Auto junk yards

Yes, Governor “Moon beam” did appoint a Cal trans head. She was adamant as to no more new freeways.

Oh, a recent new piece showed Jerry escorting a reporter around his family ranch. He and Anne, his spouse, intend to retire there. Transport. A 4 wheeler !!!

And, last and far from least, the exhorbitant cost of a bullet train…

Carl

18

The California Bullet Train…oh dear God, where to begin? The edifice complex of government officials for sure. Construction hurdles so huge that what little has been built is in an area of no need. The monies spent thus far prove once again that government construction budget estimates are completely political fabrications with the sole purpose of placating voters. I have no problem predicting that the original estimate of ~ $40b will balloon to between $120b to $150b - if it ever gets completed.

The great thing about these kinds of pet projects is that once they get started there is almost no chance for reason and pulling the plug. For the money spent thus far they could have built a fleet of natural gas and electric buses to serve the intended L.A. to San Fran route and give free rides for more than a decade and still have spent less than the already massive cost overruns. Problem is they haven’t even begun building anything meaningful in the two end points - instead they have started building in an area that is miles away from the original path!

Kind of reminds me of Boston’s “Big Dig” project to place sections of highway underground. I still have their original publicity pieces; a fancy book that virtually guaranteed it would be finished for ~ $2.6b. After all the corruption, bad construction and sub-standard materials remediation, mob graft and more - final bill: $24.3b! The worst part is that they cannot completely guarantee that it was all built correctly. Yeah, that’s the tunnel I want to have :slight_smile:

Come to think of it, even at a three to four times overrun I could be vastly underestimating the final cost of California’s Bullet Train Folly: the train to nowhere!

19

Awful, indeed, but it did clean up older cars.

Wynn’s used to make small, purple bottles of the stuff, called “SmogChek.”

Once I discovered it was MTBE, I just bought a (faaar lees expensive) 30-gallon drum of it to use on customers’ cars, during the early years of emission checks, in the 80s, here in Colorado.

I once—ONCE—made the error of taking a sniff of it: I wasnt right (or, less right, as Im sure Breyer will point out) for a couple of days!

:rofl::joy::sweat_smile:

20

Wynn’s !!!

Bad memories of the stuff. Circa 1950, I was working during my college years at a full service station. One of the sales persons that called on us was a friendly Wynn representative. Had a “perfect” black 41 Ford sedan delivery. he espoused his product enabled huge benefits, including the use of 10 W oil. I tried it, dumb kid.
Cost me two V8 Ford long blocks in my 47. I went back to 30 W the third, sans Wynn’ s, and all was well again. My disdain of “snake oil” lives to this day.

Carl