Moving to California Do I Need to Have My Wrx Tuned Again

The government is always a little belatedly to the party. It's not their fault. They are a huge bureaucracy with many moving parts. So, it isn't a huge surprise that it has taken this long for them to figure out that a lot of car folks similar to add performance to their vehicles by tuning the Engine Control Unit (ECU). But the California regime has finally defenseless up with this trend and on July nineteen, 2021, when a vehicle is smog checked, the Country will go through the OBDII port and scan the ECU to determine if an aftermarket tune is on board. If the ECU tune is not stock, you fail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. I tin already hear the people in Texas laughing at usa.

Ah, the ole OBDII port, federally mandated on any vehicle sold in North America later 1996. It is a bang-up place to connect, diagnose and fifty-fifty tune your car. Now, it's a place for the government to become upwards in your ECU's concern. "Hey, you lot got a warrant for that?"

As a homo who breathes air, this new smog control check shouldn't be all that infuriating. Clean air is a good matter. Newsflash: nosotros all demand clean air to live. Smog has been definitively improved in the Los Angeles surface area from years of improvements to ensuring the internal combustion engine burns cleaner. We accept a lot of people in a concentrated expanse in California, all sitting in traffic burning gasoline and creating pollution. Smog checks are a way to improve that state of affairs. So, as a auto guy or gal who likes to improve their ride, how do you lot navigate this new set of rules? We nevertheless want to play with cars.

This is Los Angeles, California. Nope, it doesn't wait like this in the movies. Smog is a real issue and the California regime is trying to amend it. You better lock your tuned ECU in your gun condom next to your AR-xv.

And so, what is the workaround? Well, you could drive a 1969 Cadillac Coupe Deville, there is no OBDII port or ECU on that bad boy. Or, you could buy a Tesla, because in that location is no engine in that automobile to be smogged. For folks with a tuned ECU in that location a couple of things you lot could do, notwithstanding some of them are unethical and illegal and I would certainly not suggest them in any style, at all, ever. Retrieve of these workarounds similar to the ones that were around during prohibition, similar: "Whatever you do, practise not use these grapes to make wine at your house."

During prohibition, grape farmers would make semi-solid grape concentrates they called grape bricks. They were sold with a very specific warning on the label, "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of h2o, Practice NOT place the liquid in a jug and leave it in a closet for 20 days, considering then it would turn into vino." You have been officially warned.

Not all custom tunes are sets of evil coding (they are simply zeros and ones) and they aren't designed to destroy the environs. Some but become you amend gas mileage or suit digital speedometers for different sized tires. The ECU controls many things, not just the emissions equipment, and unfortunately even changing your shift points on the transmission will cause yous to fail inspection. Thankfully many companies provide tuners that add tunes and that also accept tunes abroad from an ECU. Nosotros used a COBB tuner to add a custom FSWerks tune to our "Way of the FiST" Ford Fiesta ST for the One Lap of America race. In one case the race was over, we pulled the tune out of the ECU to become back to stock. The fox is non just switching the tune dorsum to stock, but completely removing the handheld tuner signature and its access to the ECU.

We added a tune to our Ford Muscle project car Ford Fiesta for the I Lap of America event which was run exterior of California. When we got back to the state line we pulled the tune out of the ECU. If the machine was tested today it would laissez passer smog.

SCT Tuners take the ability to put tunes in and take them dorsum out (like…right before you lot get to the smog station). SCT and other tuners also have CARB (California Air Resources Lath) legal tunes that should pass inspection. This is simply the reality in the Gilded State. Living in California we accept had difficulty working with aftermarket companies even for track specific racecars for years. We attempted to gild a tuner from Hondata for our NASA Honda Challenge racecar and they would not send information technology to us in California. We have a crew member who lives in Arizona and we told them to ship it there. They wouldn't do that either because we were paying with a Paypal business relationship with a California address. The illegal and unethical workaround was to have the crewmember purchase it with his account and so he would ship it to the states afterwards. The only people making coin on this deal are UPS. And all this is for a caged racing car with no license plate.

Standalone engine management systems, like this AEM Infinity, tin do wonders to brand your auto faster, merely will merely cause you grief at a California smog station.

Californians, if you lot are rocking a modernistic car and you have a juiced tune in the ECU you have been officially warned. When you demand to practice a biannual smog check odds are that car will fail. Well, I say information technology will fail, unless you are role of a car community that shares one stock ECU that you all pass effectually for smog checks. Not that I would ever propose something like that, considering that would exist unethical and illegal.

Editor'southward notation: While humorous, this story is not intended in any way to advocate circumventing emissions laws that protect the environment. However, it does acknowledge that certain policies, when enforced, may have no bearing on emissions while greatly inconveniencing enthusiasts looking to modify their vehicles and back up the $400 billion aftermarket industry.

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Source: https://www.fordmuscle.com/news/california-to-check-for-ecu-tunes-heres-the-workaround/