Leon993

This one goes out to California Rennlisters:

Im moving next month to L.A. and knowing how stringent the environmental laws are in California, how concerned should I be with my 993?

I have an finely tuned 993 with no cat that passes emissions in New Mexico, but something tells me I wont get away with this in California.

Having a 17 year old car, are the inspection standards lower for older cars?

I love my current sound: cat bypass pipes, OEM mufflers and wide ovals make terrific sound. However, if California wont let me get away with this, I may get a Stage III from Fister and slap on my old cat. What do you guys think?

earossi

Chances are that you will not pass visual inspection without the cat. You may want to investigate adding a cat. Either the OEM or a sport cat from Fabspeed or another vendor. Since the lack of cat will also result in a CEL, you will have to restore the operation of the light. You are about to enter the land of tough.

hal m

You will need to reinstall a cat before passing emissions in beautiful Cali, but it is well worth it!

If you replace your OEM mufflers with some Fisters (stage II or III depending upon your taste), you will have a very nice exhaust note AND be able to live and breathe (and register your car) in LA

Kika

Before the Kalifornia bashers come in and start discussing our smog restrictions, let me convey the following.

I grew up in San Gabriel in the 60s and 70s. Our house is about 4 miles due south of Mt. Wilson. My bedroom window looked directly at Mt. Wilson. Most summer days I could not see it due to the haze and crud in the air. We used to have smog alerts, when we had a stage 1, kids were not allowed outside for recess. We had lots of these when I was in elementary school. Hard as it was, going outside to play made your lungs and eyes burn. yes, it was that bad.

Then in the late 70s the state started mandating higher restrictions on industry and cars.

I now live 30+ miles from Mt Wilson and can see it on most days from our backyard, so while it is a pain to smog our cars every 2 years, it has actually made a tremendous difference in the quality of our air in the LA basin.

to the OP, an untrained eye may not catch the visual inspection, even if your car can pass the sniffer, but you run the risk of not passing.

gonzilla

Welcome to LA!

If you need to set your readiness flags before you get your car smogged, you should definitely check out this thread:
https://rennlist.com/forums/993-foru...est-drive.html

The basic gist of the "BMW drive cycle" is this:

- Start engine, let idle for approx. 2 min, 10 secs.

- Accelerate to 20-30 MPH, Maintain steady speed for approx 3 min, 15 secs.

- Accelerate to 40-60 MPH, Maintain steady speed for approx 15 mins.

- Decelerate and come to a stop. Then:

- Idle in Neutral for 5 mins. (manual trans.)

- Idle in Drive for 5 mins. (Tiptronic trans.)

During the drive cycle, do not exceed 3,000 rpm or 60 mph. However, just to be safe, I don't rev above 2700 or go over 55. That widens the margin of error if you start to zone out.

In my experience, you have to do this twice to set all of the flags if none have been previously set. YMMV.

I think I've come up with the best route in LA to get the job done. I posted this in the aforementioned thread, but I'll paste it here for you. I just did it again this past weekend and got it done first time around on each stage.:

First of all, if you mess up on part of it, you don't have to go back to the beginning. For instance, trying to find a place you can go 20-30 MPH in LA is tough. I got about 2:50 in a few times until I finally was able to go the whole 3:15. The same went for the 40-60 MPH section (on the first run at least). I attempted a few times before I was able to get through the whole 15 minutes.

For the 20-30 MPH stage, I used Vista Del Mar (the beach road west of LAX) going north from Imperial to Culver (indicated in red). There isn't much traffic and people don't really care if you're only going 25. Stay to the right and you're golden. If you continue onto Culver (indicated in blue) you can hop on the 90 fwy east to do the 40-60 MPH section (indicated in green). Take the 90 to the 405 south. By the time I got to Western I was done with the 15 minutes of 40-60 MPH. Mind you, this was about 7:00am on Saturday morning, but I did the same thing on Thursday afternoon and was done with the 15 minute stretch by the Long Beach Airport. Hopefully this will help some of you Angelenos who are trying to set the codes!

Leon993

Thanks alot fellas. I appreciate the feedback. There is no question that this could be the opportunity to get a nice cat from Fabspeed, but my budget is kind of tight with the move. I may start with a Fister III and my old OEM cat and see how that register.

I'll reach out again next month, see if any of you known undesirables wants to hang out!

chaoscreature

Leon,
Is your car a 1995 or a 1996-1998?
The loading and the certification for the converters are different for these two applications.
If you have a 1995 you are welcome to borrow my stock cats when you get here to pass smog. I only use them 1 day every two years now .
As Kika mentioned if you are going to be driving around on the street here in CA it's good courtesy to have some sort of cat on the car. The difference that a 200 cell cat makes on your performance is about 0 while the impact on the environment is rather substantial. Thats enough preaching from me for the day

chaoscreature

Oh,
If you have your old OEM cat than you should have no problem passing with that. The failure rate for the stock cats is very low from what I have heard.

TheBen

Love to meet a new local 993 owner.

BTW since I've been getting my car smogged, they tech. has never done a 'visual' inspection. They've opened up the engine lid and taken a quick look but that's about it. Certainly they've never gotten under there.

Kika

I am about as undesirable as they come! I feel a Red Car gtg looming, although I would really like to do an early morning drive first, anyone know a good route?

Thinking an early Saturday AM...

gonzilla

I'm usually up around 3am these days.

C4SJOHN

Leon 993, wecome to So. Cal let us know when you get here so we can say hi...John

Georj

I have a 97 993 C4S. It has always been a CA car and has always passed smog test with flying colors. The emissions from my car are significantly lower than the averages allowed. Yet this year I was required to go to "Test Only" stations for smog. I don't fully understand the "Test Only" requirement, but my understanding is it is a much stricter testing then the usual smog test and even costs more. Of course my care again passed with flying colors. When I asked the guy why I had to come to "Test Only" station, he said because my car was over 15 years old. I think CA requires all cars over 15 years old and out of state ones to go to "Test Only" stations.

In every smog test, there is a visual inspection and without the CAT, you will not pass.

George
1997 C4S

gonzilla

That wasn't the case last weekend when I got mine smogged. Went to a smog test place, no visual, just hooking up the OBDII and the tailpipe "probe." They broke my damn OBDII port cover though!

Kika

just because the visual is part of the test, doesn't mean every Tech performs the test.

My guess is that they assume if it passes the sniffer, it MUST have a Cat in place.

FWIW, the last 4 or 5 times I have gone to the smog station (Test Only) they did NOT do the visual inspection as far as I know. It comes down to time and when there are customers waiting, they are more likely to return if they can get in and out quickly.

Can't say I blame them, I would probably evolve to the same business paradigm eventually.