kits in california?
 

hey guys, so i'm looking to put a homemade turbo kit into my miata, but i live in california where if your car doesn't spew clean mountain air, you don't pass smog. and unfortunately for me i live in a big city, so its even stricter emmissions standards. i was just wondering if anyone in Cali has put together their own kit and actually got it passed for smog? did you go to the refferree? and what engine management setup were you using?

i'm toying with the idea of trying to convince the smog guy that my car has the motor from an MSM, since your allowed to do swaps of motors, if its the same year or newer, and is the same one that came with the car. even though i want MS so bad, i think i might end up sticking with EMU.

Emmisions depend on what the specific regulations are. I'm not too familiar with the california ones but from what I have read they are pretty retarded.

If they are only doing a tailpipe emmisions check (like they do where I live) it is no problem. Just lean the hell out of the idle and all will be good. If they are going to open the hood and check that every stock part is accounted for and there are no extra parts, or every extra part has a CARB number on it, your probably screwed on a DIY kit and would be forced to use a CARB approved kit from someone.

What year is your Miata?

Mark

You will never get your DIY setup to pass a visual test. You need to avoid it somehow. You can pass the sniffer all day long as long as you are tuned properly and catted, but you'll fail the visual unless the guy you go to has no clue.

yeah i know thats what sucks! :( the miata is a 95 which i was hoping would be easier to smog because its before OBD II but i don't know how to get passed the visual test. i was thinkin (purely hypothetical of course) that i would just photoshop some carb stickers and stick them on all the not hot stuff. that way the dude can look at it and be like, looks good to me. i had an intake on my honda and they never did more than just give it a glance with that shiny little sticker. i REALLY wanna try to run MS but i don't really feel like moving to nevada.

The ECU lives under the carpet. What the tech cannot see, the tech cannot question.

i thought about using a greddy kit carb sticker, and placing it under the hood

Any idea where you can get spare stickers?

You can totally do this. You have to photoshop the BEGi CARB stickers but it's doable. Since you are pre-OBD-II you can run megasquirt, the trick is to make everything look factory. In other words loom any wires that you run, and use black electrical tape at the wire junctions.

You then have to tune it carefully, but if you do this all well, you can sneak it by. How many smog techs really are going to look for the MAF sensor?!? They don't care, they want to see the CARB E.O. number and then make sure it looks kosher. If it looks clean and it runs clean, you can skate through with the CARB E.O. that BEGI has. Unless it's a miata expert who knows what a BEGi manifold looks like. I would just as soon suggest you buy the manifold and downpipe from BEGi as they make some nice pieces, however a true DIY kit can get past smog with the right stickers.

Mark

if you get lucky, it is far easier and worth it to pay somebody to pass you... :cool: i've heard people charge about $350-400, not bad for every 2 years and i think that's totally worth it with out the hassle. IMO and YMMV.

It doesn't matter if you're car actually spews cleaner air than it sucks in. If it doesn't have all of the Federally mandated smog equipment, or if you add anything, or alter anything to your car that does not have a CARB EO#, you won't pass smog.

Such is the "beauty" of Kalifornia.

There is no "legal" way a DIY turbo or a FI kit will pass smog in Kalifornia.

i live in cali.

when i tried to smog, the car was N/A with a link. i hid the MAP, loomed the wires, put the stock intake on, and tucked the end od the MAF pigtail out of sight. i also have a JR header and some powdercoated engine pieces, i had no problems passing visual.

a frind of mine has an FM2. he basically just swaps in the parts from a begi 4.2 and never has an issue. he never removes the link.

the techs don't know what they're looking at. most of them don't even know how to check the timing with the battery in the trunk.

Bling Bling

:rofl: @ battery in trunk

I've heard stories about people obtaining P.O. boxes in Calaveras County. Calaveras is a rurual area, so nobody has a real address, and there's apparently no smog there as well. Just register all your cars to the P.O. box and you're smog exempt.

You didn't hear that from me, though.

i don't even know where that is, or even heard of it

You're not much of a reader are you? You've never heard of Mark Twain's Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County? It's between San Jose and Sacramento.

i get all my reading done on the internet. lol

I have no problem with how high the emissions standards are in California considering how important California agriculture is. Still, if your car passes the sniffer, why should anybody care about the plumbing.

Anyway, without a carb sticker, the only way to pass is to test at a place with a really stupid tech, or pay somebody to pass you.

I've passed my last couple of times with a highly modified Greddy kit. All I needed was the sticker. This last time, I had to go to Greddy in Irvine to get a new sticker. All they did was checkt to make sure the snail was one of theirs. They didn't seem to car that nothing else from the stock kit was left on my car.