Since I was born and raised in San Diego, I can really feel your frustration. During my college years (early - mid 90's) I had an old Toyota Tercell that drove great. The problem was, it was a gross polluter from 0 - 15 MPH. After that, she actually ran much cleaner than necessary. Anyway, I needed to have a $2,000.00 repair and the smog ref would not give me a pass because I purchased it from my sister and they said that SHE was financially responsible to fix the car. Like I was going to do that to my sister who sold me her old car for $250.00. So, I took off the tags from my jet ski trailor and slapped em on my license plate. Got me through college. But, as you may well know, I was not allowed to sell the car in it's state. I tried parting it out but who needs parts to an 84 Toyota Turcell? Apparently nobody in Oceanside. So I had to sell it to one of those charity places for 100.00 bones. The crappy thing is, it really ran nice. Needless to say, I got about 40K miles out of that car (total of 93K when sold) and only really had a 150.00 out of pocket cost - it was the risk factor that sucked.
Back to Fiats - Now I'm in TX and I can run a streight pipe if I want to. What is the benefit, if any, for removing the cat all together?
Don't worry, pollution does not travel from one state to the next. So, the CA govt doesn't have to worry about that.
