I would put money on a prodrive downpipe passing visual, that thing looks 100% O.E.
As long as it looks O.E., and the Tech thinks its O.E., then it won't need no stinkin #'s....hahaha

 

...like I said, its not a matter of "what's legal" its a matter of "what can I get away with".

 

Actually if u want to get into whats legal, it is against Federal law to modify the emissions equipment on any car....Period

That means no intakes/exhuast nothing, but that law is never enforced.

I guess we all just have to take everything with a grain of salt

 

Intercoolers are not CARB items so they are should be fine(they do not affect emissions). BOV (well BPV) are though so keep your stock one. So technically an aftermarket TMIC with the stock BPV should be fine. You may have to take it the ref to get it certified but it should be ok.

Also cat backs are also not CARB items since they do not affect emissions. Watch out for noise levels though.

Nick

 

more like 95dB @ 18 inches from the exhaust tip.

 

are you sure? You won't can't pass with an FMIC...so there's SOMETHING about that that's illegal. I was thinking this was more because a bigger TMIC looks enough like a stock one to not raise questions, but its still illegal.

 

well there was a big thread in NABISCO and they were saying that.


http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show...tercooler+CARB

 

Evo's come stock w/ fmic's so they have to be smog legal.

 

Its not that FMICs aren't legal in general is that you are making changes to the air/fuel/emmissions system that is illegal. There are FMIC kits with CA OE numbers and companies wouldn't go through all the pain and $ to get the OE if they didn't have to.

jason

 

exactly...its not a question of whether FMIC's are legal, its a question of what came on your car when it was CARB certified. Just because a part is legal on another car doesn't mean you can put it on yours and be legal.

 

why not? If that part is smog legal...it should be legal on any car. How does a fmic change emissions provided that it has a recirculating bov?

 

I could be wrong, but changing to a front mount for cars that don't have fm's originally have to cut into the bumper beam, which may affect crash test safety.

Once again I could be wrong, so please no flames

 

A part is smog legal for a specific application. This means it is only legal made by the manufacturer who ordered the OE number, for a specific make, for a specific model, for specific model year(s).

As for the FMIC, when you change anything with air or fuel paths, burn, circulation , etc, you change the way the way emmissions behaves. If you can understand why an Intake needs to be certified, understanding the same for an FMIC is not hard. An FMIC changes the density of the air coming into the engine...

jason

 

its all illegal.

best legal mod for a WRX: trade it in for an Audi RS4...oh wait, those aren't legal either.

 

I understand what you are saying, but my point is that in a real world application there is virtually no change in the amount of pollution created by a car running a fmic as opposed to a tmic. I understand the legality issues...most people running an aftermarket fmic have atmospheric bovs as well as other mods that do cause more pollution and CARB is trying to prevent that. CARB's rules about modifying intakes applies to the intercooler, but I'm sure they were not specifically targeting intercoolers. They are probably more concerned about CAIs and aftermarket forced induction. I bet if you compare the CO output by a stock WRX with another stock WRX w/ a fmic the numbers would be almost identical.