No, it doesn't suck!! Quite the contrary...

 

I think that some of the backlash comes from the outrageous enforcement charges levied in relation to the exposure. Frex; Fueling your sand buggy in Glamis from a racing dump can has cost several people $10,000 fines. Or, a quarter million dollar fine for selling gallons of windshield washer fluid which had 1% more VOC than allowed by the state.

This kind of stuff sort of smacks of motivation for money gain rather than the objective of keeping the state cleaner.

 

im against it... why can my buddy down the street run his 64 vet with no mufflers and i have to wait 20 more years before its considered exempt, if ever?
i remember passing smog back in the 90s without even a cat, but it would never pass the visual.
i think if you dont drive but 1000 miles a year, there should be some exceptions.

 

In my part of SC we don't have any inspections of any kind, we can drive them year round, and have some great mountain roads and empty stretches of highways.

Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

I wonder why there are emissions limits on cars at all...:


Hmmm... '64 Vette had closed crankcase vent system but nothing else for emissions control. No cats, no EGR, no closed tank ventilation, and it has a carburetor and mechanical ignition advance control. "Testing" for that car is visual inspection only, as there were no actual tailpipe standards in place when it was first sold. That's done with the engine off and cold. Loud exhaust is a separate enforcement issue for that car not related to smog rules, and very tough since there were no noise standards when it was first built.

Less than 1000 miles annual exemption? That '64 'vette pukes out more tailpipe pollution in 1000 miles than my passes-easily 928 emits in 20,000 miles. It casually leaks more raw hydrocarbons in a year than my car will emit in its lifetime. It emits more than half a pound of pollution every mile that it drives, if you want to get down to numbers, so 500 lbs of smog would be generated in that 1000 miles, not counting the raw HC from the vented fuel tank. You would have had to live the L.A. basin in the sixties and seventies to have a clue what effect that had. The air was thick and brown, and tasted really bad; not just "smelled bad", tasted bad.

Legitimately passing California smog requirements with a 928 sans cats is virtually impossible, in spite of the old wives' tales rumors to the contrary that circulate here. The testing done at the smog station is two rolling samples, while the full test is quite a it more comprehensive. I spent a little time consulting to a popular Italian car manufacturer who wanted to certify their cars in California. We "fooled" the test for a little more than a year before the state revised the testing protocol in response. Kinda like the VW diesel fiasco in reverse, really.

We moved to central Oregon, where clean air is a popular feature. The population density is low enough that regular smog testing isn't a requirement yet. The result, same as I've observed in other rural areas around the country, is a disdain for maintaining emissions controls on cars. There are plenty of cars that have exhaust fumes that make your eyes water and choke you. It's all OK, because those fumes blow downwind to somewhere else, and become "their problem" so nothing to get concerned about here. Heads-up: It's a global problem!

[/rant mode]

 

I fully believe in proper smog controls. I have seen pics of LA before these rules made any dent.

However - the issue I have, and will always have is that the numbers/data don't lie. If I can have a more stringent Data-based test on a car I have modified, then I would be happy. If I want to modify the car, I should only need to keep the numbers - not specific parts or whether it is NA or forced induction.

 

I would happily take a car to a body-cavity search STAR station if the only criteria for passing the test was beating the NOx/CO/HC emission standard for the year of manufacture of the vehicle. Never had a 928 fail an emissions test, nor would I want to drive one that did, it would mean there's something very wrong with the tune. There's plenty of 'room' in the HC/NOx standards for pre '95 cars. As long as the car makes the numbers, why shouldn't it be acceptable to the state?

 

I strongly agree. It was the situation in the UK before I left (end 2007), albeit with annual, fairly comprehensive, (****) safety inspections and smog tests. My highly modified car always passed easily, so I was happy.

However, the issue would then be how comprehensive the smog test would need to be. As VW have proved, it's easy to 'tune' for limited test conditions. I could see CARB requiring prohibitively expensive testing if there weren't strict limits to what could be changed. That would be a big improvement though.

 

I also think an important factor is the limited volume and actual mileage driven by classic cars. You can quote the bad polluting stats of a '64 vette, but I bet if you add up all the mileage driven of every '64 vette in California and all the resultant pollutants from those miles, that it would be a fraction of the pollutants put out by the millions of model 2015/2016 cars that are driven every day there.

I agree with Mark, that some sort of mileage based exemption for rare cars seems reasonable.

So here's a fun hypothetical question. If there were no emission requirements and you could pull off all the emission control equipment on your 928, would you?

 

and your point is??

that vet, 1/2lb of pollution every mile it drives? so, in 12 miles it takes that entire gallon of gas and turns it into pure pollution?
what does your car produce.
you say that in 20,000miles you make near the same pollution as the vet in 1000miles, so as far as a carbon footprint, you guys are even..maybe his bang for the mile is the same as yours.

If we really break this down.... we all agree we need standards for emission control for our planet. why dont we get rid of smoking... burning fields, heck, we should also plug up alll the volcanos too.... where do you stop. no more racing cars???
we all have our comfort zone of what is acceptable and most of us are hypocrites.

personally, we all should have a limit of what we can produce per year, sans occupational requirements. if i can only drive my car 1000miles per year without smog stuff, ill deal with it.

most cars go into closed loop when floored, so should there be a cap on that to?

the entire regulation system needs an overhaul

 

Yes and did it the day after it passed the last mandatory emission test and that was back around 2005.

 

My favorite 'slide by' rule is from Lamborghini. In the mid 70s the rules were tightened again and the V12 from Lambo wouldn't pass without a air pump. But, the rolling road test only took the engine up to something like 2800 RPM for the cruise test. So - Lambo, being the enterprising engineers that they were put an air pump on with a clutch and a cutout relay that de-clutched at 3200RPM.

Test - passed. Emissions in cruise - unchanged.

 

isnt that simillar to almost ALL cars today. you floor a CTSV and watch the wall of smoke out the tail pipe as it releases its 600hp... but around town and on the 20mph dyno rollers in closed loop mode, it burns as clean as the driven snow. the entire subject is a complete JOKE. made to make people feel good. stupid and a waste of our money and resources.

 

I don't know about the CTSV, but the 'entire subject' is not and was not a joke. I grew up in SoCal in the 60s and 70s and can attest to the gains that smog checks wrought. I have no problem with making sure a car runs clean by design and is not over-polluting through faulty service.

Having said that, there is certainly some political influence going on with the CARB people and it's beginning to overshadow the good work that they do. It's a complex calculus when it comes to who, how much, how long, and exemptions. There are refineries near downtown LA that used to put out massive amounts of smog, and now they don't put out nearly as much. But - I can tell you from experience that the El Segundo power plant has failed numerous particulate, and ozone requirements, and they get off with a slap on the wrist for massive pollution failures, while someone like the politically unpopular companies face millions in fines for relatively small violations. Fines usually rack up at $xx,xxx per DAY of the violation, but it's all up to the arbitration board, and sadly they are a bunch of political hacks that have an agenda, and it's not pollution reduction.

 

I had one in my area a mile from my house. I drove right by them, but saw three rice rockets lined up for a sniff.