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Now the way the ref sees it, because of the way it looks like it’s laid out in the diagram, there probably shouldn’t be any bends in the tube—it should just come straight out of the front of the engine. We suggest that that would be impossible in most applications to have a big old honkin’ intake stick straight outta the throttle body but the fact remained that he wasn’t comfortable with it and he didn’t want to sign off on that part.
The longer we sat there the more it became clear we weren’t leaving with a smog certification. All that said though the referee was very reasonable and assured us he wasn’t going to fail the car, just recommended we take it to the local smog shop instead because there’s no way they’ll nit pick the stuff like he had to. We agreed and he let us be on my way with one condition—that we do a burnout upon leaving the ref station. We obliged, with a little 2nd gear rolling action on our dry rotted Pirellis.
In the following hours we visited 4 other smog shops. The first said he only did 96 and newer vehicles, the second said he didn’t have time to do it—the gas cap test would take him forever (seriously?) and the 3rd flat out said he didn’t want to touch a swap. Feeling discouraged we hit one more smog station on the way home…
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| “No problem,” said a man named Frisco! He rolled it on the dyno and tested it without the slightest “visual inspection,” whatsoever! All he asked for was the EO number for the engine! |
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| We don’t even remember the name of the shop that finally took us but that’s probably a good thing. We don’t want to rat ’em out for their uncircumspect service! We may really need that next time we’re due in! |
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| A green “PASS” is a good thing! In and out in twenty minutes, we had my smog certificate and were off to the DMV for our new sticker! |
So what’s the takeaway here? That little sticker you get with the E-ROD kit that you don’t get with a regular engine pull can save you an assload of time and trouble if you’re willing to pay for it! It’s a get out of Ref free card! We could have cut a lot of corners if we wanted to too, but then what fun would that have been?
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| Oh and if you aren’t a fan of our Facebook page you probably missed our contest we had to guess the weight of Project V8 RX-7… |
