Swappin' Smog Saga...

[andy]

I'm in the process of getting my car smogged here in California, for the first time with the new engine under Smog Check II, including all the inspections, emissions, and government BS. I thought it would be interesting to cover the whole process from beginning to end, with all the (hopefully not too humorous) deviations such a process is sure to endure.

The car:

Okay, as per the sig pic, it isn't fooling anyone that it's a daily driver. The interior is stripped leaving most of the dash there, and a very nice 8 point TC Designs cage takes its place. It's quite low, hot inside, and on the freeway it easily pushes 90db, probably louder on the inside thant the outside. The graphics and stickers have just about every kid out there trying to race me, even a dusty old pickup truck full of garden equipment came zooming up behind me once while I was waiting at a light. He hit the right turn lane, jammed on the gas and did a credible drift if not losing part of his load and careening into traffic as I sat there and watched. As a result of that and the low gearing (4000 rpm at 80 in 5th), I usually end up driving it granny style on the street just to avoid any trouble.

The swap:

I build the car primarily to be competitive with USTCC regulations which, in a nutshell, specify all BMW parts, computer, and a minimum weight relating to the displacement of the engine. We sized it to give a weight of 2725 with driver, which was close to the car's weight anyhow, so that was the least expensive option to build a somewhat competitive car. At its finish, the swap included a borrowed stock 325 airbox, a e36 center section with cats, a Bosch 413 ecu tuned by DSR, a custom midas cherry-bomb enabled muffler and a very nice set of headers I happened to get for a song and a dance. The whole thing put down about 200hp / 185tq to the wheels running on the rich side, which isn't all the power it could deliver, but it was safe until I could install more gauges, oil temp, oil pressure, EGT, etc.

So, nearly all stock parts that say 'BMW' on them, emissions equipment in place and my DMV printout bearing the works "TEST ONLY STATION" in hand, I made my first stop at a Test Only smog check station.

[andy]

Step one:

This particular smog check station was recommended by my mechanic that helped with the swap. My mechanic works on BMWs and Porsches, and it appears one of the few cars that's more difficult to get to pass smog than BMW 4 or 12 cylinder cars are mid 80s 911s. "Go to this guy, he'll set you up!", my mechanic said. Half hoping I could take care of everything right then and there, I cruised in mid-morning with the car nice and warm to be sure it didn't sit around while other people were getting checked.

Station Guy took a look at me and my car and started asking up front about the cats, the emissions equipment, the headers, the airbox, serial numbers on the ECU, etc, etc, and within about 3 minutes of driving up, I realized this fellow isn't going to miss a single thing. Luckily, nobody else was there, and it looked like I would get to go right away.

But just as he got ready to test my car, another Porsche mechanic drove up in a nice early 80s 911SC, waved frantically to the guy and proceeded right into the bay without a stop. The fire drill started as Station Guy ran over, yanked the testing equipment off the wall and like a practiced ER surgeon plugged various sensors and probes in getting the smog readings from the car in just a few minutes.

Once that car was out of the way, he brought my car in to have a look. He started by noting the piece of dryer hose I had attached to front of the stock airbox (home-depot style CAI) and said that would cause the car to fail. Ignoring my offers to remove it on the spot, he continued examining the intake and exhaust system, looking somewhat confused. I thought to offer some help regarding the newly installed engine but I was still a little miffed about 911SC guy jumping in front of me to test, so I thought I’d just let him figure it out for himself.

Finally after consulting some documentation and making a few phone calls Station Guy walked over to me and said, "This engine doesn't belong in this car!"

"No," I admitted, "Not really, but it's all from parts of the same year..." Rolling his eyes, he started into the process I'd have to go through, getting it certified at an official referee station, getting an exemption sticker for the engine, and going on from there. Sure, things I figured I’d probably have to do, but Station Guy did actually have some good advice about the process, such as which referee stations were less strict, and what they would look for.

Finally, to test the smog output he finally hooked it up to the dyno. The car ran relatively cleanly, but was about 200ppm too high on NOx at 35mph. Not that bad, actually, probably cleaner than most vehicles that saw 3000 highway miles a year, but I wasn’t going to pass smog that day.

The list of changes he recommended were:

- be sure the car had a stock computer (he didn’t look at it)
- find stock headers or get an exemption sticker for them from the manufacturer
- replace the old Toyo RA-1s I was driving around on with tires with some significant tread on them. (Yeah, that was probably worth a few ppm of NOx, I’m sure)
- Get an exemption sticker from the friendly folks at nearby referee station

So, failed notice in hand, I pointed the ‘ti back home, a little disappointed at my mechanic’s friend’s ability to ‘set me up’ but interested to see what the next step might be.