Kalifornia strikes again... Jegs to pay $1.7mil

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But that only works assuming the car is stock...  How many tunes are out there that can disable the codes for missing cats?  A lot.  In that situation, the computer says "all good" even though the car is blatantly catless. 

Actually, you can tell if the codes are disabled. The response from the car is different, you get N/A instead of OK. And selling tunes designed to circumvent emissions check is blatantly illegal, those guys are being shut down already.

People can also pull the cats during the year, install them before the test and drive them long enough to set all the readiness monitors. There are always ways to cheat if you're willing to work for it.

“Drugs can not be sold that harm you.”

(quoted for hilarity, no offense intended)

Based on the one sentence in the article that one could possibly glean anything from, I would hazard a guess they had some sales people giving information on how to use off-road parts and get around codes. 

I do think car emissions regs from the EPA/CARB probably are guilty of a bit of paper work blindness.   I.e. a 5% or 10% target in reductions, including penalties and incentives, without realizing the diminishing returns (which beget dieselgate).

I saw somewhere that Cali's air quality would improve in the next 20 years if no further changes in emissions were required, simply from the retirement of older generations of cars you newer models. 

The inversion layer in Cali they'll never get rid of though, so there will always be an issue with pollution. 

rslifkin said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But that only works assuming the car is stock...  How many tunes are out there that can disable the codes for missing cats?  A lot.  In that situation, the computer says "all good" even though the car is blatantly catless. 

Just had my truck e-tested.

The guy doing the test told me of a recent incident where the cops showed up at his shop after pulling over a car because it was smoking badly, and the driver showed a just passed e-test. He told the cop, that's not my problem. I plugged it in, the computer says everything's ok, the car passes.

I spent the morning fixing a small exhaust leak (rust) so I didn't have any problems passing as this was a strict requirement in the past. When I told him he said it no longer matters. No codes? You pass.  Cars with the O2 (and other) sensors disabled will pass every time.

In reply to Suprf1y :

I'm not sure I understand your point? Are you saying because the testing where you live is silly means all testing is silly? What do you mean by "disable the 02 sensor?" Every modern car I've driven will throw a code, are you saying in pre-OBD-I cars? 

That wouldn't fly in CA, TN, OR, or KY (i.e. all the places I've lived) - they do a sniffer with the obd check (if OBD-II). You can't have anything lit on the dash, etc.

Most modern cars I know of (we're talking 96' and newer) if you were smoking, had an exhaust leak, or a myriad of other issues it's going to throw a code. 

**edit - apparently obd2 became required in 96' in the US

I think he's using it as an example of the flaws in some forms of testing, and how the  "if passes the sniffer test (or whatever test is being run)" it should be legal , doesn't always work.  

In reply to Appleseed :

He says they don't use a sniffer where he lives.

**Edit: The more I read it the more I'm confused - he says they do a plugin only test, but what car with an OBD-II port will pass while smoking or with an exhaust leak? What is this "disable the 02 sensor?" As noted by Kieth, that's very illegal state side. I guess you could do a standalone ecu?

I remember when I first moved back to texas, being super worried about getting my WJ inspected because it probably shouldn't have passed inspection in VA (not for emissions, just other crap it had going on @the time of inspection). then they hooked everything all up, it didn't throw any codes, they said "yup seems to stop fine" and that was it. I was left standing there feeling stupid because it was a bit of a joke lol

In reply to MazdaFace :

Ha! That was the thing I found hilarious in CA. There was a car in my neighborhood that had clearly been T-boned and not repaired w/ current registration (that I saw driving multiple times) - as long as they still passed emissions - they were "good to go." Of course if a cop pulled you over they would impound it (the same that they could for bald tires, etc, etc), but still - no inspection is kind of scary for the 1+ ton vehicles flying down the road when your average person couldn't tell you where the brake master cylinder is. 

In reply to accordionfolder :

There is some seriously scary E36 M3 driving around the California freeways. For as absolutely anal as they are about emissions, and putting those" Prop 65 this product is known to cause cancer" stickers on freaking everything, the lack of even a basic lights and tires safety check during the smog tests is mind boggling. 

After living there, I sort of miss it. It's really not as bad as it looks from outside. Sure, in town in Sacramento or SF sucks, but I hate big cities and the people in them regardless of where they're located, because I don't like crowds or traffic. Getting out of the cities though, it was almost like being home. A very dry, brown (landscape) version of home, with better food and less rust. 

Except you can buy cans of race gas at every single parts store. That's unheard of to me in Pennsylvania, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense with regards to their vehicle laws out there. Despite the extra price of EO numbers on parts, they really are fans of motorsport out there, they'd just prefer it stay on track or off-road. Seems like a fair compromise to me, although I do think there is some unnecessary gouging on EO numbered parts at times. 

In reply to RevRico :

Very much so with the EO'd parts. I'm more of a fan of the all or nothing regulation set. From previous threads with AlfaDriver sound like the EPA and CARB should be converging soon.

The problem with the EO system in my eyes is that more obscure, or less supported, cars will simply end up as junk if there isn't an approved aftermarket replacement with an EO. Something like the REAPS system off early emissions controlled rotaries could easily be an insurmountable roadblock (in this case I'd just repower it with a newer 13b and cats but you see my point I hope.)

If the system for testing and certification was standardized nationally it would help a lot.

accordionfolder said:

In reply to Suprf1y :

I'm not sure I understand your point? Are you saying because the testing where you live is silly means all testing is silly? What do you mean by "disable the 02 sensor?" Every modern car I've driven will throw a code, are you saying in pre-OBD-I cars? 

That wouldn't fly in CA, TN, OR, or KY (i.e. all the places I've lived) - they do a sniffer with the obd check (if OBD-II). You can't have anything lit on the dash, etc.

Most modern cars I know of (we're talking 96' and newer) if you were smoking, had an exhaust leak, or a myriad of other issues it's going to throw a code. 
 

No.

With some manufacturers ECU's you can disable sensors so they'll never set a code.

No.

I don't know why you would see a code for either a smoker, or an exhaust leak. I guess if the leak was in the right place. Not sure if the O2 would pick up the smoke, but in the instance I heard of from the shop it didn't and while my leak was small I've driven that truck with only half an exhaust while I was working on it and no codes.

An e-test that only checks for codes (what we and others have) isn't really an e-test and it can easily be fooled, though 99% of the population will never know that, and modern systems/cars are so good that I could see cars going their whole live's and never failing.

We no longer have to pay for the tests here. I don't know if they're in the process of phasing them out, but I hope so.

My main complaint with this kind of stuff is that in Cali, a Honda Civic with an aftermarket intake is illegal "due to pollution" but I'm sure you can go buy a stock F350 and drive it around totally "pollution-legal" there. 

I can understand if people are removing cats or tuning super-rich, but seems like this is an abstract money grab by the state rather than a meaningful measure. I don't much care though, since I don't live there....

They went after the brodozers first, actually. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm talking about stock pickups, which put out way more emissions than a modified econo-box.

Is this based on actual objective information or simply opinion because trucks are bad?

Keith Tanner said:

People can also pull the cats during the year, install them before the test and drive them long enough to set all the readiness monitors. There are always ways to cheat if you're willing to work for it.

I knew people pre-OBD-II who would do an engine swap every other year in order to pass emissions.

irish44j said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm talking about stock pickups, which put out way more emissions than a modified econo-box.

That's not really true, emissions is grams/mile and not percentages.

There are lots of reasons to hate trucks, but emissions is not one of them.

Keith Tanner said:That's already the case. The tests you need to pass depend on what you've changed. For example, an intake that won't touch fuel lines won't get the evaporative test, but a turbo kit that changes out fuel lines will.

Trivia:  A lot fo newer cars have absorbent pads in the stock airbox to trap hydrocarbons leaking upstream from the intake manifold after the engine's shut off.  So, changing the airbox WILL affect evaporative emissions...

Interesting. So in that case, you may have to do a chamber test. IIRC we did not for our 2017 turbo kits even though they change the airbox, so it may be model year specific.

I don't wish to add anything to the Jegs debate, but do wish to comment on the whole emissions scene in general. I'm old enough to remember pre-emissions cars, and  the smelly, unreliable, guzzling performance they had. The early attempts at emissions control in the 70s were disasters, because the manufacturers tried to put bandaids on their primitive engineering. Gradually things got better. We got fuel injection in order to meet emissions, but got better running cars as a side effect. As standards got stricter, we got electronic fuel injection, leading to the beautifully tunable horse power we have now. The lean burning emissions cars needed better spark to ignite the weak mixture, so we got high energy ignitions that would ignite a fart in a windstorm. And because all of this had to still pass emissions after 100,000 miles, we got engines that run well for huge mileages. Remember doing plugs, points and condensor every 10,000 miles? No? Thank emissions regulations. Remember engines that would need to be warmed up for 5 minutes in the winter before they could be driven at all? No? Thank emissions regulations.

We're in a golden age of horsepower, speed, economy and reliability all at the same time. My experience tells me that in the absence of the emissions regs, we'd still be driving around with carbs and ignitions systems that were just barely good enough to run, and cars that were completely worn out by 100,000 miles and needed major service every 5000 miles. These are the good old days - we got performance and horsepower because manufacturers were forced to make better control of the combustion process. Hotrodding a car is soooooo much easier with a laptop and an ECU than peering at spark plugs to guess if the mixture was close enough, and changing carb jets every time you move to altitude.

I was told by a smog place that they are thinking of going to a wireless test for the next ODB.  Basically, if the car see's a code, it self reports.  Not sure if that would be at registration time only, but I can guess what they would want to do.

I was getting some interestingly low result on a car I was tweaking to get to pass (alcohol in the gas etc).  I later found out there was a rather large long rusted hole in the exhaust just upstream of where the probe would reach.  I am not sure if this would change the results though (not likely to let much air in).  Maybe with a low flow it might suck some in?

In reply to Suprf1y : 

Every OBD2 car I've owned and worked on throws a code for a "too open" exhaust. (I.e. bigger exhaust - my bothers truck is doing it right now) or pretty much any leak. What year is your truck? 

2011 

It's been running for about a month now with a Flowmaster and no tailpipe. It's annoying but no code.