I have an 85 with an old Cosmo 13B in it. usual mods, intake Carb and exhaust. Question is I am considering moving to California. Can I use it there? any loopholes? or will it have to be sold?

 

you actually have many options.
1. keep the Washington registration, in addition to not needing a smog, its also way cheaper.
2. to get registered here the car needs a smog. however once its registered the emissions are done by county, and there are plenty of counties that don't have emissions

for the actual smog, there is a visual check, for all of the emissions equipment, and then the sniffer test. if you can do a GSL-SE setup, that would work (it is legal to have any optional engine for a particular year/make /model). engine swaps are legal, but the engine must be the same year as the car or newer, and it needs to keep all of its emissions equipment intact.

the dyno emissions test is really easy, its only 15mph and 25mph, everything passes. the visual is harder, and when you combine the two its a PITA

 

You are most likely going to have to find "loopholes"

Mines totally does not pass smog visually or mechanically.

RX7's are mandatory STAR Smog every 2 years and the vehicle is already listed in CA as a " high emissions vehicle"

I would do as j9fd3s said and try to keep the car registered in WA if possible.

 

I’m going to be murdered. MSD Atomic efi is CARB certified for use with older Chevy v8s. Not sure about the details. I’m going to douse my self with bleach now

 

Hey good idea about keeping the WA state registration. Are there any areas that do not do testing? I looked up the laws in CA and they are kind of vague on this...

 

if you poke around the DMV website there is a map. they have BS names too, you either want the enhanced (dyno) smog or the no smog, its by county

 

So what happens if you have your shiny new Cali issued Drivers License and you get pulled over driving an out of state car registered in your name? Seems there should be precedence for this.

 

its a good question, and i don't know. my dad has a CA drivers license, and a car up in Oregon, but he hasn't been pulled over in a while.... he did get a letter asking him to register the car in California, and ended up with dual registration for a while (Oregon title, Oregon plates, Oregon Registration, California Plate, California Registration. if you get that letter, just say no, its ridiculous)

 

What city in California are you moving to?

U can "find a guy" to pass it for you illegally. But they charge around $180 to $250, I use to pay $100 but the smog stuff has gotten and is only getting more strict here in CA.

 

I might just have to stay in WA state. I do dream of a warmer climate!

 

southeast is where it's at. non of that smog crap here. take ur pick, AL, GA. SC, NC. then u will be close to deals gap.

 

Oregon is the new California? they only do emissions in two places, Portland and somewhere else (Eugene? Salem? not sure).

 

AL = no car inspections ! but cops will pull you over for a headlight being out, weird landscapes on the rear window, loud exhaust

Miss.= no emissssionssss

 

if you cross over the Cascades you will get plenty of sun.

 

Oregon really isn't such a bad option if the goal is a slightly warmer climate. I reside within the Portland metro area and so testing is required, but it's some of the easiest testing ever. No rolling road, no underhood visual, just a mirror under the car to look for the cat and a sniffer test. I've gone through with my SA twice now, and if you can temporarily rig the smog system up (which is what I had to do) you can easily pass assuming you're not running a radical port job. I passed at 33ppm on HC (limit 220) my last time through with the other metrics well within spec.

The Portland and Medford metro areas are the only places that require testing, although the zone does extend pretty far beyond just the home city. We've also got a fair amount of variety with the coast being damp and forested and then everything gets drier as you go south/east. Decent roads, not many potholes, only snows a couple times a year where I'm at and we don't salt (usually)! This is turning into a sales pitch...

 

Hmmm, Love all the Ideas, The south would be a nice change, I have nothing tying me down here so I'm still looking. I am not ready to sell my high school dream car just yet!

 

Mexico is nice from what I hear and they don't check jack... Just sayin.

 

Ya, and that's where Dominic "Dom" Toretto went

 

That is one pretty FB LW, it deserves to remain rust free. Time to get out of the Rain Forest.



I'm sure you know that the best used cars come from Georgia.

No rust, no rough roads, no emissions and the cars last forever.

Georgia has it all, great weather, not too hot, not too cold, not too dry and not too wet, no snow.

Mountains, lakes, rivers, Deal's Gap, a Rotor Head's wet dream.

And now that we're a Blue State the politics are fantastic too!

 

Isn't that the progenitor for inspections?

 

Well some inspection of those monster Georgia pick up trucks would be a good idea, in my opinion.

One of those RAM trucks pollutes more than 10 FB's every day. To scoot some fat *** red neck around.

But inspections are not a problem for RX-7's.

In Georgia, vehicles over 25 years old aren't inspected anywhere and they don't need titles.

Just a bill of sale.

This would include all RX-7's.

It's not a Red or Blue thing.

It's an Old thing.

 

montana LLC

 

Under California law you have 30 days from the date of changing your domicile to register a vehicle within the state, your domicile is defined as your primary place of residence ( the place you get your mail, pay your bills from, live in, the address on your license, etc.) so no you can not keep it registered in WA as much as you'd like unless your domicile is in WA . Some states consider this a form of tax evasion but I won't delve into that
Also whoever said 7's are STAR required, my 79 was not. I live in CA and as of today, my car has no smog gear. F' this states bullshit laws.
Yes, smog is getting stricter in CA but not for old cars, if your car has no computer to plug it into it's still done old school with a dyno and a sniffer + visual inspection, there's no way to hook computers up to your car so no amount of new laws can require it to check your ECU ( as they now do as of 2019, no more running modded ECU's ) .

And yes emissions are a blue thing, 99% of these overbearing laws are "blue" things, it's always some smarmy idiot who thinks he/she/whatever can fix everything by passing draconian laws . Statistics have already shown keeping a car on the road is greener than buying a new green car . When you factor in all the metal, rubber, plastic, mined out of the ground, the new tools and machines built to make the car, the paint etc, it's not going to be greener than running ga car 40 years. Esp when these new hunks of crap meet their fate at a crusher ten years after being made, ESP when dumb presidents make idiotic policies like cash for clunkers that take millions of working vehicles out fo circulation, tell me again how its green to destroy car's that are survivors.. affordable and generally maintained to a degree to keep being used. I remember used car prices shot up after a lot of good econo box cars got smashed because some hippie though it was a good idea to replace them with " green cars" I still see 95 civics and accord, I don't see 1 f'n first or second-gen Prius ( none lasted more than 12 years LOL) , the second the owner finds out the battery cost 5 grand that car gets sold to pick a part or donated to goodwill . I'm sorry, I'm ranting but people need to wake up and realize buying new cars , of any kind is more harmful than keeping a "smoggy" car on the road.

 

Won't work under Cali laws, actually, it won't work in most states.

 

riddle me this: I thought the newer emission regs weren't retroactive. That is, your old car just had to meet the original emission requirements in place when the car was made.

And it may be the law that you have to change your license and car reg over within 30 days, but how are they going to catch you unless they specifically target you, or they stop you for some traffic violation? A real world example, I lived in NJ 5 months before they caught me. In Alabama, they never caught me, and I changed it over after a year. In Cali, they never caught me, and I changed it over at expiration. In Dallas Tex, I changed it over 6 months after my La registration expired. Ah, the early 80's, the police were "cool" compared to now. Ever cop thinks they're Judge Dredd. Going back to Tex in 2001, in San Antonio, I tooled around a year with a NJ license and reg before changing it.

And if you are charming to the dept motor vehicles clerk, they will give you unsolicited advice on loop holes such as claiming that the car was in storage, and you just put it back on the road.

This only holds true with pre on board computer cars like ours. For newer cars inspection, the inspection station is automatically linked to the state govt, and a state trooper will roll up on you at the state inspection station. Moral is, it is good to hold on to an old car, and stay out of the system, fly under the radar, keep things on the down low.....