Written by Quicksilver, who just moved to California from Michigan. This is info for all of us Californians, North and South:
Two days before the smog, I swapped back my DP and Muffler (I had a Bosal DP and Scorpion axel-back (ie Prodrive). I also had my friend clear all codes w/ his hand-held OBDII reader. No codes were stored anyways.
I looked up shops on the internet and called around and picked the cheapest station near where I lived ($59). Some places literally charge over double that.
When I drove up I asked the tech a couple of questions: asked about the KN filter and the blue samco IC hoses. Once I explained what the hoses did, the tech said “no-problem”. It’s very important to ask specific questions because the law states that the tech has to do the test in a certain order, so a cel will be an automatic fail, but the tech will perform the entire test, even when he knows you will fail due to the cel. But if you asked them BEFORE the test about certain things, it saves a lot of hassle. Also, it’s a chance to get on the tech’s good side and to explain things that may seem questionable later. Once the test started, they really went into auto-pilot and it was hard to talk with them.
Since it was AWD, no dyno.
The tech placed the car in neutral and placed a rod to depress the gas pedal to reach ~3000 rpm. He had the sniffer in the tailpipe and the OBD scanner hooked up. The computer pretty much did the rest. They checked the gas cap. The tech asked about some wires which were dangling from my fuse box (I was in the middle of gauge install) , once I explained, it was cool.
I did not see them check under the car or do any specific visuals outside of looking under the hood. Defintely no mirrors. They scanned the barcode on the driver’s door (to get VIN, I guess). Some techs started gathering to check out the car, a couple wrx fans were amongst them. One guy even said he saw a wrx on the drag strip take out a mustang (big whoopee-doo there, hey we know what wrxes can do). I tried to downplay all that and never gave them a reason to suspect I modded the car’s performance, but I don’t think these guys cared at all. They must do like 50 cars a day.
The whole thing took like 15-20 minutes. The tech printed out the report and the results looked clean across the board. Not even close to failing any parameters.
Like I posted earlier, this is w/ gutted stock cat (sensor still in), all stock exhaust, and KN panel filter, and blue samco IC hoses. Car has ~60K miles.
You can PM Quicksilver with specifics and the shop info.
Two days before the smog, I swapped back my DP and Muffler (I had a Bosal DP and Scorpion axel-back (ie Prodrive). I also had my friend clear all codes w/ his hand-held OBDII reader. No codes were stored anyways.
I looked up shops on the internet and called around and picked the cheapest station near where I lived ($59). Some places literally charge over double that.
When I drove up I asked the tech a couple of questions: asked about the KN filter and the blue samco IC hoses. Once I explained what the hoses did, the tech said “no-problem”. It’s very important to ask specific questions because the law states that the tech has to do the test in a certain order, so a cel will be an automatic fail, but the tech will perform the entire test, even when he knows you will fail due to the cel. But if you asked them BEFORE the test about certain things, it saves a lot of hassle. Also, it’s a chance to get on the tech’s good side and to explain things that may seem questionable later. Once the test started, they really went into auto-pilot and it was hard to talk with them.
Since it was AWD, no dyno.
The tech placed the car in neutral and placed a rod to depress the gas pedal to reach ~3000 rpm. He had the sniffer in the tailpipe and the OBD scanner hooked up. The computer pretty much did the rest. They checked the gas cap. The tech asked about some wires which were dangling from my fuse box (I was in the middle of gauge install) , once I explained, it was cool.
I did not see them check under the car or do any specific visuals outside of looking under the hood. Defintely no mirrors. They scanned the barcode on the driver’s door (to get VIN, I guess). Some techs started gathering to check out the car, a couple wrx fans were amongst them. One guy even said he saw a wrx on the drag strip take out a mustang (big whoopee-doo there, hey we know what wrxes can do). I tried to downplay all that and never gave them a reason to suspect I modded the car’s performance, but I don’t think these guys cared at all. They must do like 50 cars a day.
The whole thing took like 15-20 minutes. The tech printed out the report and the results looked clean across the board. Not even close to failing any parameters.
Like I posted earlier, this is w/ gutted stock cat (sensor still in), all stock exhaust, and KN panel filter, and blue samco IC hoses. Car has ~60K miles.
You can PM Quicksilver with specifics and the shop info.