Is anyone else looking forward to the fine year of 2006? What makes this year so great you ask? Well let me tell you. It marks the first year that my Z will no longer have to try to duck the smog ****'s any longer. And that puts a smile on my face. I know there's alot of you who havent had this problem what with older Z's then mine, but I'm getting excited. In the two years I've had the damn thing it's never been registered for street duty because it couldn't pass a smog inspection. She's finally gonna get her stickers, just a few more months and I don't have to worry about getting rolled by the man everytime I fire her up and go for a cruise into town (and she's LOUD so she draws a lot of attention).

 

Very nice, Jason. I wish I could see 2006 with my Zed as well ... but, circumstances are given, and I've dealt. Guaranteed there would have been a supercharger on Alexandria if I were to keep her.

 

yes and my plates will be around 200 bucks a year (antique plates) rather than 500+!!!! w000t!

 

That depends if Arizona is included also. Is it, and how does it work? Does the car have to be a certain age to be exempt?

 

here in alabama, it's 30+ years for the Antique tag... I am still about 3.5 years away. That tag is around 100 bucks, and is a LIFETIME tag. Even so, our regular tags are only around 60 bucks/year.

Jason, glad to see you are going to rise up against "the man"! no more holdin' you down..

 

If you can't pass emission though, then there is something wrong with your fuel system. Even with the normal 'smog' equipment removed, it should be able to pass the air inspection or its not running correctly.
2007 is the year for me. We test once every other year. Right after my next inspection I can swap in my turbo engine and not have to wonder if it'll pass. (even though it should)

 

tru tru... but I've adjusted my Z to run a lot more rich, and removed the cat). in Utah the HC level must be below 220 ppm for my 1981 280zx. Without the cat, the lowest I got down to this past emissions was 458. W/ the cat in, it was in the low 100's.

 

I had a sticking valve causing a hiccup and an exhaust leak causing a rich condition and Cali takes its visual inspection pretty serious too (thats where the first year and half were spent). And it's 25 years or older to become exempt from the emissions testing (as long as it sticks). Exemption begings the first Jan following the 25th anniversary of manf. date. My car was manf. in Dec of '80 and is an 81 model. So it's 2006 for me baby. As far as antique plates go that probably varies from state to state, I don't know how that works. I've also got to pass a safety inspection out here in VA now too and I'm missing my rear bumper and left rear taillight and my turn signals, side markers, and reverse lights aren't wired up right now either. So that ain't happening right now.

 

my z is a 83, that puts her at age 22. In my state 21 and older is a classic, a classic never needs inspection, and only 1 tag for rest of her life, but i think that only be in mississippi. Plus they alow me to just have headers on her, and I can't get pulled over for being to loud.

 

California has suspended the smog exempt cut off year as of this year... indefinatly. So, for the time being, the cut off year will stay the same and not increase with each calendar year. Sorry.


Rod.

 

Are you serious Rod!?! That sucks. So is it 1980 and older or what? How's it work? CARB is out to get every last car off the road if it doesn't burn vegetable oil and fart tulips when it's not operating off of it's electric motor. Pretty soon they're gonna have the authority to start destroying cars that they don't think should be on the road anymore. It's a shame what they're doing to the car enthusiasts. And sure people can spit all that crap about clean environment and all that ish, but when it comes down to it what needs to be fixed out there in SoCal is the damn freeway congestion that's keeping the "polluters" on the road longer than they should be. They could very easily lighten the emissions requirements and still have low emissions from cars. And they're prescense is haunting the rest of the country too as other states are becoming more and more like CA everyday in regards to emissions laws. I think the ratio of "Older" cars to new low emissions vehicles is such that they can give us a little more breathing room to enjoy our "classics" the way we want to. And besides for how clean CA is supposedly keeping the emissions levels of their vehicles has anyone taken a look at the skyline in the inland empire lately? It's been a few months since I've been back to Cali but it was still brown as can be. It's the damn freeway congestion causing the problem not the innocent cars. **** pisses me off. Well I'm done ranting and raving for now. Peace.

 

The cut off year stands at 1975. There are currently no plans to reinstate the yearly increase for cut off. Sucks to be us. I was really thinking about doing a mad RB turbo swap in a couple of years.


Rod.

 

Yeah I was planning to move back to Cali, right there in San Diego actually. Well Spring Valley to be exact. Things aren't going to well out here in VA so I might be making a move again. Time will tell. Need to get this business started man!!!

 

You can't stay away from SoCal... I've moved away three times, and moved back every time. Come on back... We'll hang out and do Z-Stuff

Rod.

 

Yea, its sucks. 06 would be my smog exempt year too. I would love to just have straight pipe with no decible worries, but that's not the case. And just to be technical . . .smog exemption just means, at least in the west coast area to my knowledge, that your car is exempt from annual tests, but still must maintain stock equipment and if the chp or other organizations feel the need, they can force a smog test on you.

 

Rod,

You can still do a motor swap. You just need to do a little more preparation and paperwork for the state.

As long as the motor meets emissions standards for the year in which it was originally manufactured (as long as it's equal or newer than the one that originally came in your car) you just need to make sure you document it properly.

Since the RB's were never sold at retail in the US, I'm not sure how that would work in CA, but there are enough 240SX's out there running SR20's that you should be able to get some infor from them on how they made the swap and avoided the tail pipe ****'s.

Cheers,
LWW

 

You're exactly right, I was aware of the fact that you could still do a legal swap. However, Since the RB was never a CARB certified motor... or sold in the US, It's still not legal. I can stick a brand new corvette motor in it and make it 100% legal with very little hassle. Getting the RB legal is a whole other story. I'm guessing that a properly tuned RB-TT will have far less emissions than my old L28... but the smog ****'s don't care about all that. It really sucks when common sense suffers at the hands of good intentions.


Rod.

{EDIT} A buddy of mine has/had a 240sx with the SR20 in it and got popped. They sent him to the smog refferee and all that BS... didn't matter. In Cali, there's no legal SR20. He wound up selling the motor because of the hassle. That was a scary fast car though

 

all this nonsense.... I couldnt imagine living in a state that forced all these rules...

 

Yeah you still have to keep all federally mandated emissions equipment on the car. But you don't have to get the emissions test so it's alot harder to get popped for wrong doing. So technically speaking, you're still not supposed to tamper with any of the emission equipment like the cat and ish. And from all the horror stories I've heard, the CHP is the only department that actually educates their officers on what they need to look for as far as that sort of stuff is concerned. I've seen incidents of CHP pulling out measuring tapes to measure headlight height, checking tire wear for unsafe camber, and even having CARB numbers for popularly modified cars like Civics so they can reference if you've put a fake CARB sticker for a part. They even know where to reference serial numbers and some can recognize engine swaps and tow your car if you don't have the paper work filed to back up your claim that the swap was legit. This stuff isn't mandated (as far as I know) but alot of them do take the time to gather this sort of information. Now I don't how the Highway Patrol in other parts of the country fair, but the CHP is pretty well versed in this stuff. Not every single officer, but enough to the point where their getting recognition for it while I haven't heard a thing about other law enforcement agencies. Just a little bit of misc. information for those who are as bored as I am.

 

Oh and this just something I thought about back when I was looking into motor swap: As far as the SR20DET goes, the older Sentras did come with a NA version of the SR20DE as did I think atleast one other Nissan vehicle. Both however were only offered front wheel drive. So that may tie into how the SR20DET is able to get past smog. The only other thing I could come up with is swapping out the motor for the emissions test? Souns like a lotta trouble to do that though. Oh, and thanks to Motorex, the RB26DETT has received CARB certification but as far as I know Motorex is the only company who is authorized to make it so. So you could probably find a way to swap in an RB26 and get it certified through motorex and the state. However, they only do the RB26 and don't deal with the RB25 last I checked (been about a year). I think they said they won't even import motors anymore, just complete cars, so it's probably gonna take some convincing to get them to certify an RB for something other than a Skyline. Just my 2 cents.