Agreed. It's so hard to see the uppipe I would wager against it being spotted 100% of the time.

I think inspectors are mainly looking for shiny chrome/ss/cf parts, stuff that is clearly aftermarket. Anything that vaguely resembles OEM (especially after putting miles on it) should be fine. You hear more about people who waltz in with huge bolt-on turbos and catbacks and come back clean than those who get caught.

Just to answer though, swapping the uppipe every time would be enough of a pain not to do it. You need new gaskets, 2-6 hours labor, and double that to get the catless back on after testing. For a number of reasons, the uppipe is one of the safest and most discreet performance mods to change once and forget.

 

listen to Chris, he's got a great idea!

Prodrive axle back is really subtle, matched with a high flow cat in the DP, a new up pipe, and mid piping and you are set!

 

thanks for the ideas everyone! now i just have to figure out what route to take


eric

 

For smog certification they dont even look at the car, and they cant run it on a dyno cause of our AWD, so basically they just plug in the car and run it at idle and check. Catbacks will even pass smog, so I'd only worry about stuff like headers and items that replace the cats (uppipe/downpipe). I had borla headers on my 95 L and I just took them on and tested it with the catback and it passed just fine.

As for cops, just keep it quiet and non-descript visually and they dont usually even notice.

If I had a WRX, i'd go ***** out in terms of exhaust (everything including headers), but leave one high flow cat in there just to be nice and make sure the muffler isnt too noticable or too loud (resonators help with the loudness factor) and when it came time for smog just swap the stock stuff exept the catback back on.