What did you do to your Volvo today? Topic is solved

[bmdubya1198]

I think its county by county in CA, but generally its 1976 and on for smog for gas engines.

Cars are about 100x cleaner on tailpipe emissions and 1000x cleaner on HC from fuel evap than the 1960s

It only takes 1 car out of 1000 to negate these gains if you relax standards. They are pretty active in looking for stations that are not testing to standards with very high fines, like business-ending level fines.

Yeah, I'm sure the fines are pretty high.


Went to the junkyard this morning and found this Ocean Race Edition XC70. I was really surprised to see one! I tried to buy it but they won't sell whole cars
RIP #419

[850 LPT]

So sad!

[abscate]

One of those 650 people is going to want that metal soon...

[bmdubya1198]

Finished rebuilding the driver side axle today just to have the outer CV joint pop out... pulled it home and popped it back into the garage. I'll fix that when I redo the rest of the suspension tomorrow or Friday. My Konis arrived today too...

Popped through the box, but the struts are undamaged.

[j-dawg]

I get what they're trying to do, but the restrictions on modifications are just ridiculous. I mean, it's not like everyone is going to be modifying their cars. I get that "every little bit counts" for reducing emissions, but I don't think Joe Shmo who just drives his car to work and the store and wherever else and isn't into cars is going to care about modifying his car in any way. California seems like hell for car enthusiasts!

agreed on the ridiculousness. most of these rules are actually relatively recent, within the last 15 years. I also agree with abscate that it's super important to have an emissions control program, and it's hard to overstate the benefits those programs have yielded for our lungs over the last several decades.

what gets me is that the sniffer - the most labor-intensive way to test emissions, the thing that directly measures what you want to limit - is *supplemented* with the visual inspection. like, who cares how you get to acceptable emissions? who cares what parts are on the car, as long as it's not spewing NOx? that might be an understandable rule if you didn't want to commit people to a sniffer test, but you're doing the harder thing anyway. why add a step that disqualifies cars that you've verified don't actually make the air less clean?

as far as California being hell for car enthusiasts, I think there's a very strong case to be made for southern California being the global center of modified car culture, and it's still going strong. everything from lowriders to desert trucks to riced-out Hondas got its start or made it big in SoCal, and the ratio of cool modified car to everything else is higher in LA than anywhere else I've lived. there are more obstacles, but it's obviously not killing the scene.

[abscate]

Let someone face it, people will drop $2000 for wheel s that’s have the right look on a modded car, so it’s pretty hard to bitch about having to pay for a CARB approved cat.

[bmdubya1198]

Yeah, I feel like as long as it passes that sniffer test and you're not clearly tampering with emissions equipment, you should be good to go. I find it really ridiculous that things as simple as intakes have to be CARB approved... I mean, how much could a freaking air filter hurt emissions?

The difference in cost between a federal emissions standards cat and a CARB cat is really insane though... I paid $90 for a federal Magnaflow high flow cat for my brother's Miata, whereas the CARB equivalent was well over $300. Like I said, I totally get what they're trying to do, but some of it seems a little overboard. Just another reason I'd never live in CA!

[abscate]

Paid homage to Gabriel Voison and For a rubber squealing , full ABS deployment stop, in dry pavement that just kept me from hitting a Hyandai in the Mass Pike. Traffic went from 50 to 0 and I missed the sudden slow down.

Pissed at myself for lack of sit awareness, but then I realised he had no brake lights and I had stopped on a pure visual speed reference alone. That’s actually praiseworthy.

I got really evil hot brake stench for about 5 minutes afterwards. should I pull a wheel on the weekend and inspect the front brakes?

[ZionXIX]

Paid homage to Gabriel Voison and For a rubber squeaking , full ABS deployment stop in dry pavement that just kept me from hitting a Hyandai in the Mass Pike

Pissed at myself for lack of sit awareness, the realised he had no brake lights and I had atoppped on a pure visual speed reference alone. That’s actually praiseworthy.

Its amazing how fast your brain can calculate from "its all good" to "$#!%....gonnadiegonnadiegonnadie"

[Rattnalle]

Yeah, I feel like as long as it passes that sniffer test and you're not clearly tampering with emissions equipment, you should be good to go. I find it really ridiculous that things as simple as intakes have to be CARB approved... I mean, how much could a freaking air filter hurt emissions?

The difference in cost between a federal emissions standards cat and a CARB cat is really insane though... I paid $90 for a federal Magnaflow high flow cat for my brother's Miata, whereas the CARB equivalent was well over $300. Like I said, I totally get what they're trying to do, but some of it seems a little overboard. Just another reason I'd never live in CA!

Cats shouldn't ever need replacing unless the engine starts burning tons of oil or the like though. You really need to get your fuel standards in order or whatever it is you're doing wrong over there.

In Europe you're technically not allowed to modify anything whatsoever. Cars are certified as sold and no mods are allowed. Some minor mods like extra high beams or the like will pass though. It's about road safety as much as emissions.

Proper larger modifications are allowed using a separate set of rules.