So I might be getting a job in Silicon Valley. I am basically clueless about California's engine swap laws and emissions testing inspections.
I'm a Canadian and I have a 1990 Toyota Chaser GT Twin Turbo.
How old does my car have to be in order to NOT have to comply with California's insane inspections and laws?
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Pretty sure you only get to skip if your car was built during or before the 1976 model year. Sad times.
This but 1975.
Although you can swap a newer engine in. There are still restrictions on this, but I don't recall the details.
Commiefornian here.
No, engine swaps are not legal unless it's made before 1976 due to smog laws. There's 2 kinds of smog stations, STAR and non-STAR. When you get a CA license, it'll say if your car needs to go to a STAR smog check or not. STAR or non-STAR is determined by random chance.
If you have to, there is no chance that you can sneak by a swapped engine as they compare your engine bay to pictures of the legal engines, but if you don't need to go to a STAR station, as long as you fit a cat that will make it able to pass the actual emissions tests you have a pretty good chance of passing as they don't check your engine bay.
I have a friend with a turbo RB swapped 240 because he didn't have to go to a STAR station and snuck the engine by with cats.
As a side note, if you get pulled over, the police may check your engine bay if they think something's off, and they are trained to identify popular swaps such as BEAMS, 1JZ and RB20.
Yes, the laws suck, but the togue more than makes up for it. Norcal has some pretty good roads and they tend to have very, very little traffic on weekdays.
Oh yeah, I forgot to post that if your engine was offered on the same car with the same or newer model year in the US, you can swap it in. So, you can swap a turbo into a NA MR2 for example, but you can't swap a BEAMS because that was non- USDM.
You can swap an engine from any car from the same MY or newer so long as you retain the emissions devices, for instance you could put a LS7 in your car and not have to have secondary air injection even if it came with your car because the LS7 does not have it. In reality it's not really a challenge to run whatever you want in CA, there are no "safety inspections" like in other states so nobody really looks at the car and the emissions thing has many workarounds. Make some friends and it won't be a challenge. I live in the Bay Area but my post 74 cars are registered in another county that doesn't have emissions testing, even though my insurance and DL address is down here, the DMV/insurers don't care where your reg is sent to and that's what determines whether you need to do emissions tests or not.
Pretty much everything in your post is completely wrong and/or made up
Engine swaps are legal in California. You'll have to take it to a referee station who then ensures everything is in place, including catalytic converters and whatnot. They are notoriously picky, though.
JESUS CHRIST these laws are even more autistic than I thought. They actually look up pictures of 1JZs and compare it to your engine bay?!
What if I don't do an engine swap at all?
It would be a 1990 Toyota Chaser with 1G-GTE, which is an engine only used in Japan. It passes the 25-year rule, so is it legal to drive in California?
This cannot be real.