CA is stupid. I've heard stories of people with older cars failing because the factory-installed air cleaner didn't look like the picture in the book and other such nonsense. I'm fine with protecting the environment, but why should it matter what air cleaner or whatever is installed if what comes out of the exhaust is clean?
NJ wasn't as bad, we never had much visual other than to confirm the cats were there. I ran the Towncar through several times with no smog pump, they never batted an eye. I do remember at one point when the state privatized the inspection stations. They hired a bunch of people that had to look busy. I sat in line with my S10 and some girl that looked fresh out of high school had me open the hood so she could inspect it. I have no idea what she was looking for, and I suspect she didn't either but she looked for about 30 seconds before deciding it was acceptable enough to be sniffed. The next year all those people were gone and it was back to just the sniffer. At one point they went from an idle test to a roller test, then the rollers got pulled and it was an idle and a race the hell out of the engine sniff. The safety went away first because they didn't fail enough vehicles, so therefore it wasn't necessary. (???) Pre-96 smog went away a year or so ago. I suspect they didn't want to maintain the sniffer equipment for the dwindling number of those vehicles when they can just plug in an OBD2 scanner.
but yeah, the "buy a sticker" thing was an open secret. Everyone knew what shops would do it, and it was like 75 bucks. They'd put something on the receipt like "adjusted carb" or whatever as the justification and away you went until the next year.
NJ wasn't as bad, we never had much visual other than to confirm the cats were there. I ran the Towncar through several times with no smog pump, they never batted an eye. I do remember at one point when the state privatized the inspection stations. They hired a bunch of people that had to look busy. I sat in line with my S10 and some girl that looked fresh out of high school had me open the hood so she could inspect it. I have no idea what she was looking for, and I suspect she didn't either but she looked for about 30 seconds before deciding it was acceptable enough to be sniffed. The next year all those people were gone and it was back to just the sniffer. At one point they went from an idle test to a roller test, then the rollers got pulled and it was an idle and a race the hell out of the engine sniff. The safety went away first because they didn't fail enough vehicles, so therefore it wasn't necessary. (???) Pre-96 smog went away a year or so ago. I suspect they didn't want to maintain the sniffer equipment for the dwindling number of those vehicles when they can just plug in an OBD2 scanner.
but yeah, the "buy a sticker" thing was an open secret. Everyone knew what shops would do it, and it was like 75 bucks. They'd put something on the receipt like "adjusted carb" or whatever as the justification and away you went until the next year.
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