I wonder if eventually smog testing in CA will be limited to OBDII-equipped cars and/or they do away with the dyno test requirements and go back to idle and 2500rpm no-load tests. Either that, or the cost of dyno tests will get to be silly expensive. Over the course of the last 3 smog test cycles, a solid majority of shops around here have stopped running the dyno tests. It's just so much easier and more profitable to run an OBDII scan, issue the certificate, collect $40+, and move on to the next car in 10 minutes or less. My test took a solid 40 minutes in comparison. That, and the number of pre-OBDII cars diminishes every day, making the investment in dyno equipment harder and harder to justify as a shop owner.dr bob wrote: Sun Aug 11, 2024 11:02 am Congrats on the successful test!
That testing is something I actually miss from my car's time in Cali, something that might surprise or even amuse some folks. Local smog guy at his gas station near a property in OC was a car guy, so every visit for the car was a chance to visit and socialize. Most important was the learnings from the various tests over the decades. Slowly creeping tailpipe NOx offered clues about injectors that needed cleaning, for instance. Maybe extra valuable was his willingness to use the two pre-cat test port pipes in the engine bay, which offers the ability to isolate symptoms to one bank on the V8.
Now, out here in the wilds of central Oregon, I'm not aware of anyone who even offers that simple level of diagnostics, and certainly not for the relatively low test fees in OC. I can add a wideband CO sensor for fuel/air mixture, but unfortunately there's no no similar cheap-and-easy option for HC and NOx.
After living through the ugly times in the L.A. basin and watching the slow but steady improvements in air quality over the decades, I'm still a big fan of testing and compliance. Here, I can regularly get a reminder about 'the good old days' with the windows down at a stoplight. I suspect we are a substantial market for Cali cars that wouldn't pass inspection.
On an unrelated note, it feels like private shops figured out some time ago that nit-picking every last wingnut is bad for business these days. The 'visual' component of the test is nothing like it used to be. In the early days of CA smog, they would scour your car and make money by finding ticky-tacky 'visual' problems they could use to bilk money out of you (e.g., I once 'bought' a $10 wingnut; and had to 'tip' a guy $20 for the time he claimed it would take to look up various smog rules). That model seems to have given way to just doing as many cars as quickly as they can -- presumably because shops just can't get away with mischief any longer in our insta-Yelp world.
The Magnaflow is also stainless, and had to be welded to the aluminized steel pipes on the DEC, which was a whole other fiasco. After a climb up the learning curve, I ended up getting 309L filler rod, which allows you to TIG weld steel to stainless. Who knew... Resulting welds are not Insta-worthy with titanium rainbows, etc, but they are solid welds that did the trick. 
