TAKA

Hello. Nice to meet you guys. I'm new here, and wanna ask question about exhaust. which exhaust are ligal for CA?
I'm planning to move to CA this year with my S2K. Right now I have a Invidia Q300 on. Thank you.

s2000vtecvtec

your Q300 is fine. it depends on the area if you want a louder exhaust. in my area, either loud exhaust or droning would catch their attention and get pulled over by arcadia police.

irv_usc

as long as your OEM catalytic is in there the exhaust should pass CARB testing.

noise levels and getting pulled over by law enforcement is a different subject.

Chris_Lum

exactly.

CARB only cares about emissions related parts. so any catback exhaust will pass emissions.

But in terms of an exhaust being illegal in CA, there are many interpretations of the law (even by cops) but it's generally just a sound regulation. The law states that if it's under 94dB then it's legal. Some cops will still give you a hard time no matter what exhaust you have, but that's CA for you... Your car could be completely legal but if the cop thinks something is not legal, he could give you a ticket and/or send you to the state Referee, wasting your time and money.

TAKA

Thanks guys. I think I'm going to put back OEM before leave here. How about tower bar, truque bamper, bodykit, coilover? Are those modification illegal?

99SH

You should post these question in the Socal forum.

Tower bar & torque damper are legal. Body kit is legal so long as you don't remove the bumper (the styrofoam piece). There's also laws on how low you can drop the car (measured from ground to headlight). Checkout dmv.ca.gov for the 'rules'

Chris_Lum

i've never heard about anyone ever being hassled over ANY strut bars, torque dampers or body kits. CA cops are mainly focused on emissions parts (exhausts, headers, intakes, cats, etc), front plates and tint. Yes there are many other regulations like ride height, aftermarket steering wheels, etc. but people rarely get hassled about that stuff. You will see hundreds of cars everyday running around without front plates, with dark tint, blacked out taillights and other blatantly illegal stuff, but i think there are so many that cops don't really care. Also depends on what area you are going to be in too....some areas have cops that are more lenient than others.

whiteflash

You have NO reason to put your OEM back on. California does not do a DB test with smog. The exhaust is completely devoid of anything related to smog. You could be running a 10" muffler and it wouldn't matter. There's no such thing as a CARB'd exhaust.

Only thing to do with smog, is everything that draws air into the engine, and everything that exhausts' it out up to the cat.

Your body, suspension, bars, shift knob, trunk, etc. are unrelated and fine.

The only thing illegal about exhausts is if it breaks a noise violation. Which like I said, is a non-issue with smog (unless there's a cop there )

TAKA

Thank you for a lot of information guys.