I know that my options are very limmited in california with cams. I know basically I can stick with the stage 1's, but i was looking to order a set of vt custom grind blower cams. How does the smog reff test to see the legality of the cams? I really want to run the blower cams, and i might have a hookup for smog, but was wondering if i get sent to the reff how they test it. Thanks.
Cams In Cali
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Kingcater
New Member
Subscribing as I would like to know an answer to this as well...my bet is we have no options....as usual
anything bigger than a stage 1 style will fail tailpipe. theres no way to test the cams, without pulling off the valve covers, and that isnt part of the test. when i took my smog training, they said that it can be plainly obvious that the car has a cam or cams, but that there was no test we can do to verify it.
when i worked at a smog ref station we had cars come in with cams, and almost all failed.
when i worked at a smog ref station we had cars come in with cams, and almost all failed.
Got to figure a way to register the car out of state. When I lived in Cali back in the 80's, it was a problem even then.
Rusty67
Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
Sounds quite right to me. Maybe if you were able to run straight ethenol fuel for the sniffer test you would pass the sniffer test. In order to get it to run correctly tho, I'd imagine you wouldn't pass the test once they hooked up the computer to check your computers specs.
TrueBlue03
Member
the ref will put it in your butt 
but yes...many shops in the san jose area were telling me about the problems with passing smog even with a fairly non-aggressive set of cams in our cars.
hows she running these days? your car would be a beast with some blower cams!
but yes...many shops in the san jose area were telling me about the problems with passing smog even with a fairly non-aggressive set of cams in our cars.
hows she running these days? your car would be a beast with some blower cams!
i dont know from experience.
i know we had a dsm guy, HKS 272/272's, 60trim with all the fuel support, full 3" turboback exhaust with cat in place, passed the sniffer pretty good (not flying colors, but enough). failed visual (vacuum hose routing for his 3bar map sensor, chrome IC piping and 1g bov in a 2g made the guy fail it visually)
i would imagine with the stock exhaust on and your cats were in pretty good order, they would be able to still scrub enough to make you pass with mild grinds. however the problem is, unlike a power adder like sc or turbo that are load-dependent (meaning theyre pretty much doing nothing while at idle or constant throttle which is perfect for emissions), cams are full-time and have basically one setting based on how fast the motor is spinning.
i know we had a dsm guy, HKS 272/272's, 60trim with all the fuel support, full 3" turboback exhaust with cat in place, passed the sniffer pretty good (not flying colors, but enough). failed visual (vacuum hose routing for his 3bar map sensor, chrome IC piping and 1g bov in a 2g made the guy fail it visually)
i would imagine with the stock exhaust on and your cats were in pretty good order, they would be able to still scrub enough to make you pass with mild grinds. however the problem is, unlike a power adder like sc or turbo that are load-dependent (meaning theyre pretty much doing nothing while at idle or constant throttle which is perfect for emissions), cams are full-time and have basically one setting based on how fast the motor is spinning.
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