Headed to LA. Will my car make it?
 

Hey fellow forum members. I am an Oregon resident moving to LA in July. I currently have a JDL 4-1 header w/ Cat and JDL ultra quite midpipe with 2nd cat connected to a Perrin 2.5 exhaust. I have never had problems passing DEQ here as I have a custom tune from Bob at drift office and no CELS. While I be okay once I register my car in California or do I need to swap back to stock headers and mid pipe to pass DEQ? I have only head about ultra strict laws but don't really know what the truth is. Any advice?

You will need all stock header and stock cats to pass visual in Cal.

if u have family or an address in Oregon, u can prob register your car there still

Well yes, I suppose I could. And just drive it back every 2 years to get new tags? Isn't this slight insurance fraud? I dont have any problems doing this for a couple months but the plan is my wife will be in graduate school for 5 years so I don't know how long I could keep that up.

I seem to recall exhaust measurements being taken during smog checks too. A bit more involved than Oregon DEQ.

i dunno how it affects insurance, but a guy i know had Ohio plates for 6 years while working in socal

Keep an Oregon address and plates.

Thanks guys. Driving the 30 hours back and forth once every 2 years isn't horrible but I suppose its what it takes to keep that pieces on. Maybe I should just pull them off and try and sell them for the hassle of it all. Are cops likely to pull me over if they think I'm driving something too loud?

If you've got the parts and programming lying around just swap before you need to smog and make sure your tune is back to stock.

I'm being sarcastic, so heads up.
Nope your car will not make it. Especially modded ones. How dare you take a modded car more than 25 miles a day.

Joking aside, the drone alone will make you reconsider your mods.
As for the smog stuff. Hope you keep all the oem stuff. Or you know ("wink-wink") a guy.

It all depends on how aggressive your insurance company gets. I came from the east coast and I started getting calls quick and our property we still have there doesn't have my name on it so I had to register here as soon as I was doing anything.

Depends a lot on the cop. I have had sport exhausts on most of my cars, and the only one that cops hassled me about was on my 944 turbo- ironically, it was CARB approved, so nothing ever came of that. That car was much quieter than my FRS or Z4 are

Might get hasseled, might not. Don't drive like a **** and the odds go down. But CHP is most likely since their job is traffic.


30hr drive, possible insurance hassle vs swapping and risk an state ref ticket

Probably not worth it - CHP will still peg you if you have out of states, they don't care. Headers on these cars are just super obvious, once you pop the hood they're in plain view.

I'm running a BERK catted front pipe which is a lot more subtle & provides a little better throttle response.