alright guys, i am needing to change out my headers (for those of you who saw my previous post, yes yes, still havn't changed out my manifolds =/ drivin my mom's car most of the time -sighs- ) anyways, i am livin in Arlington Va, and was wonderin to any third gen owners in VA that have to deal with our silly emission laws can help me out. Since my manifolds have to be replaced, i see this as a prime time to change them out for headers, and was wonderin if anyone in VA has had any problems not goin with A.I.R headers on my 89 5.7 iroc-z and still passin emissions without them. As it stands, i took my car in for emissions earlier this year, with an exhaust leak, and my car still passed.

 

Did you buy headers yet? If not, just get a set with AIR tubes.

If you have bought them, you could always look up the manufacturers P/N and find out if they are smog legal.

Worse comes to worse, ask a smog station.

 

It is too subjective to answer, "Yes" or "No."

Get to know a state inspector, financially, and hope he stays an inspector as long as you need to pass emissions illegally.

Or get the A.I.R. setup, deal with all of it's bull crap while you are trying to work on the car, curse it and call it one nasty motha. But atleast you won't have any worries. I prefer not having any worries and I live in Virginia.

The sleeper look is also a plus when unknowing people find the car suspect, only to see emissions. Everyone knows emissions and performance do not go together.

Summary is: A.I.R. can be a pain in the rear, but an **** inspector can render your car immobilized. And if you think going to another inspector after you run into the **** one, know that he or she will know the other inspector is watching them. Ask me how I know.

Also, make sure the headers have a E.O. or CARB number. Make sure that the headers are specific to your converter amount, and engine style. TPI, TBI, one, two cats.

 

The only thing to watch out for really is cats. They won't pay too much attention to anything else in my experience, in a lot of cases not even opening the hood. I had a guy get on me about the carb number on my cats, so I took it to a different shop and they passed it with flying colors.

 

I agree whole-heartedly. It is unlikely that an inspector is going to raise any eyebrows over not having the A.I.R. equipment. A few things to consider:

If your car sounds cool, tricked out, or has any rumble to it, chances are the inspector will get all excited as you pull in. Since he has already dubbed it performance, he will notice things out of place under the hood. If your engine bay looks like a rat-hole and has all kinds of **** going every-which-away, clean it up. Yep, might have to get out the soldering iron. Replacing some of the old convoluted tubing might be nice, too - with black. Save the neon orange, or blood red tubing for another time -preferably never!

Am I saying reconfigure all of your stock wiring and vacuum tubing? No. Just make things look as nice as possible, or close to stock. Cracked vacuum tubing? Pepboys, Advance, your work, where ever you have to go to do things the right way. Might even save your behind on the highway sometime, maybe nothing more than a tow, but thats still fifty bucks.

Making things look good, or factory, does not mean physically clean of dirt. Dirt is okay. Dirt is normal. Broken wires, tubing, parts, et cetera, are not okay.

I am not picking on you, or any other person as a single, but I see a trend. A lot of folks, myself included, get so caught up in buying performance parts, we forget that there are other things that could use the attention. Myself? I have rewired my entire engine bay, though I am running an aftermarket fuel injection setup.

Back to exhaust... So, clean things up, install things the right way, no jerry rigs that will last longer than a pay period, and find a younger inspector. The younger the better, to an extent. The youngest may be unsure and go to a senior for experience when checking out your car.

After the engine bay is orderly, or as factory as possible, make sure your car is not smoking, spitting gasoline out of the tail-pipes, smelling rich ( if your eyes are burning that's not good ), rattling at the converter ( this could be the heat shield, but may be the internals after a some afterfire through the exhaust ). This concludes your engine related tasks.

I am assuming your brakes are new, near new, anything but old with regards to pad remaining not actual age! The lights should function and be aimed properly (http://www.advanceautoparts.com/engl...0010801ha.html). High-beams should toggle on and off as well. Tires should have adequate tread, including rears, smokey! Make sure the parking brake works correctly. Would be good to have all three mirrors as well. Brake and reverse lights should function with regards to brake-pedal and head-light actuation. Windshield wipers should also function. Make sure you have the blades as well, those usually help.

Lastly, be cool, calm, and collected.

I like the A.I.R. tubes for reasons including:

At worst, a real **** douche is going to have to get down to CARB and EO number to fail me on the "headers" thing. That is a real pain in the ***** for those people since they could be spending time working on a car rather than tracking other people down at the state or federal level.

The look makes it seem, once again, moreso stock, and slow to the unsuspecting grasshopper.

 

well, in my area, we have 2 seperate inspections, emissions and then safety. with the emissions, they pop the hood to put some meter under it, but i've never seen them actually look for components -shrugs- they've never checked CARB numbers at all...and i live in an area where we have alot of non-english speakers doin the inspection lol..so i'm not really worried bout visual inspection, i don't think i'd have a problem with that, it's more about the numbers matchin in the actual test

 

but mainly why i am asking this question, is cause i am wanting to do a true dual setup (dual cat ect ect) and i dun wanna go out and buy the wrong headers just cause they don't have A.I.R. If they don't effect the numbers at really, as long as my engine and the rest of my car is workin right, then screw the A.I.R lol, there are 5 million emission stations around, i can find one with the inspector that doesn't care, or ask my buddies if they know anyone who will overlook that -shrugs-