Kalifornia strikes again... Jegs to pay $1.7mil

see, this is why we can't have meaningful discussions. It automatically goe to the extreme hyperbole when faced with something youd don't understand/agree with. 

I'm done.  

Keith Tanner said:

Of course, if you're selling chip tunes that have a "towing" setting, it's pretty hard to explain how that's used in a race car.

$65k-truck trailer racing? 

Bob the REAL oil guy. said:

see, this is why we can't have meaningful discussions. It automatically goe to the extreme hyperbole when faced with something you don't understand/agree with. 

Pot, meet kettle.  Be the change you wish to see in the world.

It's fascinating seeing the conflict here between State's rights and Business.

There's no way to tell from that article what Jeg's actually did.  We don't know if they didn't meet the requirements for labeling, if they advertised non-CARB certified parts as being for street use, if they shipped stuff to California that was expressly prohibited or what. 

Post getting deleted. I wonder how long this will last. 

Keith Tanner said:

I actually like the CARB EO process. It makes a lot of sense. Automotive emissions is a lot more complex than doing a single test of a hot car on a dyno, or even than keeping an OBD-II system happy. California could have said "no modifications to anything that can affect emissions" and that would have been that. Instead, they gave us the ability to prove that a modification does not affect emissions. Basically, put the part through the same tests the OEs have to pass and measure it. Then, if it doesn't change things, you get the EO and you're good to go. It's actually pretty logical.

I follow what you're saying from the parts-application side. You can certify a part to not affect emissions, good to go.

My question is, why can't they also accept a clean tail-pipe measurement? Why do you need to have a sticker on every part *and* a test if the test is all that matters?

yupididit said:

Post getting deleted. I wonder how long this will last. 

 

Any thread with "Kalifornia" in the title is guaranteed to be a problem due to the mindset of those who use it.

Blaise said:

My question is, why can't they also accept a clean tail-pipe measurement? Why do you need to have a sticker on every part *and* a test if the test is all that matters?

kb58 said:

What's being conveniently ignored regarding aftermarket parts is how non-trivial it is to confirm whether they're really clean or not. Proponents argue that "I put this aftermarket cat on and it passed the emissions test, so what's wrong with that?" The problem is that the emissions test takes only a few data points, leaving out 99% of all other driving conditions. Until a part is FULLY tested under all conditions, you, me, and everyone else can never claim it's just as good as the OEM parts.

Blaise said:

My question is, why can't they also accept a clean tail-pipe measurement? Why do you need to have a sticker on every part *and* a test if the test is all that matters?

Because the definition of what a clean tailpipe test is must be fixed, yet everyone uses their own self-defined version.

Any thread that starts with the demeaning (and childish) use of "Kalifornia" in the title is never complete without noting how easy it is to build a car from scratch here and get it legally registered. The same people putting down the left coast sometimes whine and complain about how hard it is to get a Locost registered in their state. Huh.

Blaise said:

Keith Tanner said:

I actually like the CARB EO process. It makes a lot of sense. Automotive emissions is a lot more complex than doing a single test of a hot car on a dyno, or even than keeping an OBD-II system happy. California could have said "no modifications to anything that can affect emissions" and that would have been that. Instead, they gave us the ability to prove that a modification does not affect emissions. Basically, put the part through the same tests the OEs have to pass and measure it. Then, if it doesn't change things, you get the EO and you're good to go. It's actually pretty logical.

I follow what you're saying from the parts-application side. You can certify a part to not affect emissions, good to go.

My question is, why can't they also accept a clean tail-pipe measurement? Why do you need to have a sticker on every part *and* a test if the test is all that matters?

A full emissions test for a 2017-model vehicle includes an overnight stay in a sealed room so they can measure evaporative emissions, followed by two different tests on the rollers that takes about an hour (IIRC) and requires a skilled operator to maintain the proper drive profile. One of those tests is done from cold so the car has to be at a specific ambient temperature. Depending on the modifications, there may be additional tests at idle (superchargers, for example). All of the exhaust coming out of the car during these tests is trapped and analyzed.

So, two days of testing in a facility that contains something like a million bucks worth of equipment (I asked) and a couple of skilled operators. And basically, yes, there's your clean tailpipe measurement. Are you willing to pay for that every time you modify your car? Or would you rather the manufacturer of the part pay for it once and spread the cost out over a large number of products? Yeah, thought so.

The tests you have to do now are to make sure that the emissions components on your car are not degrading with time. And yes, the EO tests do extrapolate out to 150,000 miles (IIRC).

I can understand wanting the EO for certain things like aftermarket fuel tanks, etc. where evap emissions would be likely to effected and stuff like that.  But for a lot of mods, I'm sure it's possible to come up with a much simpler test profile that shows nothing has been thrown way out of whack.  

Bob the REAL oil guy. said:

see, this is why we can't have meaningful discussions. It automatically goe to the extreme hyperbole when faced with something youd don't understand/agree with. 

I'm done.  

It's funny I read the first page of this and immediately thought, the usual suspects are doing it in this thread and are (not) surprisingly quiet in the other thread.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Great answer. Kinda gets back to the VW-dieselgate issue. The test can vary a lot from real use.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Good to see some sensible statements in this melee. I love all the people who've never been there, worked there, or (from the sounds of it) experienced real population density chiming in. Lots of cute attempts to boil it down to black and white in this thread. 

Blaise said:

Kreb said:

While CARB sucks in many ways, what sucked far more was to be more than a couple of miles inland on a summer day in the Los Angeles basin in the 1970s. As a teenager we used to take skateboarding trips down there. In Uplands, the skatepark was about half a mile from the base of Mount Baldy, which was gorgeous if you could see it - which we never could.  The routine there would be to skate for half an hour or so until the smog had you hacking so much that you couldn't skate any more. Then you'd sit in the shade, drink a coke till you could breathe again, after which you'd skate, hack up a lung, rinse, lather, repeat.  

I don't think anybody is arguing whether the pollution and smog problems were/are real in CA.

The question is more of whether CARB is actually a measurable improvement over 49-state emissions.

I still think the # of vehicle owners who are modifying their cars to any sort of measurable increase in pollution is well under 1%. There's orders of magnitude difference between somebody putting a cone filter on their car and stripping out the cats.

If CARB said 'your car must be below X pollution, otherwise we don't care what's under the hood' I could totally get behind it. They shouldn't care about anything but what comes out the tailpipe.

I was just providing context. There are parts of the country that would get along fine without emissions controls of any sort. 

The thing is that CARB is typical of agencies who've mainly won the fight, so, lacking big targets, they justify their existence by squeezing the little ones - sometimes to questionable extents.

I think that people are getting a little in front of themselves here. Is Jegs getting nailed for what are industry-wide practices, or is there something in their sales approach that makes their behavior more egregious than say Summit? 

I’ve been to commiefornia. I’ve lived there. There’s definitely more respect for when a person gets a car to make power AND meet the state’s laws. That said- nearly half the population there is a bunch Whiney ass douchebags into the fad of PC culture and YouTube internet lore. Not gonna lube my comments here folks. I can’t stand people like that. They are hypocrites. 

“I want clean air! I can’t breathe! Automobiles are the devil!” (Lights up a marijuana joint or cigarette to smoke into the lungs) <<< prime. Effing. Example. A state inhabited by retards. 

In reply to Trackmouse :

You've met half the population? 

In reply to Trackmouse :

Ironic, Austin is the closest thing I've found to Southern California in regards to culture in the state of Texas! 

Yall should see what people in Australia go through to fab anything or swap a car!

Trackmouse said:

 They are hypocrites.  

No more so than the (equal and opposite) whiny ass douche bags into the fad of anti-PC culture.  

There's a potentially easy way to handle this kind of thing, but I don't think anyone on this board will like it.

If someone with a mailing address in California wants to purchase a non-CARB emissions part, the retailer should be required to do two things in partnership with California. They should 1: display a disclaimer that requires the purchaser to confirm off-road use only and provide a valid DL number matching the mailing or billing address, and 2: provide this information to the state. I'd expect this to be a cross-reference kind of thing (like checking out with Paypal before being returned to JEGS/Summit/etc.), where only the state gets the sensitive information, and the company merely gets a "yup you're good" token.

This way, the state can flag certain vehicles and owners for visual inspection if they're at an inspection station or get pulled over for other infractions (a quick mirror + flashlight is good enough to determine if you still have your OEM cat), people buying things for race cars are free to do so with the understanding that the state *will* hold them accountable, and sites have strong incentive to comply, as it puts the liability and the audit risks solely on the purchaser.

This is a dangerous precedent and bad law.

In reply to accordionfolder :

A wild assumption on my part. But all the “true” Californian’s I have met were exactly like the SNL skit portrayal. And in conversation you quickly find out that they cannot think for themselves. They only regurgitate things they’ve heard from the media, that “guy at the Whole Foods” or Dr. So-and-So. Or Oprah, can’t forget about Oprah. 

I actually had a dingbat tell me to “stop wasting water” while washing a car. She insisted that I turn the hose off and only use this “special recipe” found online at a nature pathetic website that requires “no water at all”. (It was a sad mix of dawn and water and  other junk) I promptly reminded her that water cannot be wasted as it is the same water we have been drinking since the dinosaurs peed and pooped in it long ago. And that if by “wasting water” she meant my water bill, that it’s none of her business what I do with my money. The look she gave me was priceless. As if gears had started turning. No joke, later that evening, she came over and apologized and then thanked me for giving her something to think about. 

I like to think she went on to question all things told to her, so as to not be mislead by someone else’s agenda.