I just bought this car that has no cats behind the turbo. I actually had no idea where they were supposed to be, so didn't notice at the time. I bought it from out of state, so I have to smog it. It does have the up pipe cat though.

Does anyone have a stock turbo back they want to sell or lend to me? I'll pay in beer/money/whatever you want. Just need to pass.

It's an '02 bugeye in San Francisco.

-Sean

 

Well you actually don't need a cat in the up-pipe unless your smog tech knows exactly what he's looking at. As for your cat-less turbo-back, is the car tuned? You may want to pick up a stock exhaust anyways and run it if the vehicle is still on the stock ecu map.

 

Ask around for a smog station you can get a smog from, 100-300 bucks and you will pass.

OR

You should be able to find a TEST ONLY station without an All Wheel Dyno and Lift, there's a few of these around. If they don't have a lift they can't really check the exhaust well and without the dyno they can't test the car under load so you're very likely to pass anyway.

 

Thanks. This is my predicament. I have no idea if it's tuned or not. It runs quite well with no CEL and has noticeably more pull than some others I test drove. Is there any real way to tell?

I was thinking about picking up a stock exhaust and reflashing the ECU to stock (assuming it is tuned). Do you know exactly which parts (and part numbers) I would need to do this? Any advice on where I can get them?

 

Where should I ask around? I don't have a lot of car enthusiast friends here in the Bay Area. I'm from NY. Should I just be calling these places up and saying "hey will you pass my car even if it has only one of the three cats it should have?" I'm guessing that approach will probably get me hung up on quite a few times.

If anyone knows a place that can hook me up, please, please PM me.

 

Where in SF are you located? Did your car come with a Cobb accessport? If you have no CEL, and from what you said about the power, I'd be safe to say it's running some sort of Stage 2 tune (turbo-back exhaust and ecu re-mapping.) EQ Tuning in Fairfield can take care of you, they're in the North Bay.

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll check them out.

To be honest I haven't even located the ECU (literally just bought this car). Is the accessport something that is always attached, or something you plug in just to tune it? I didn't get anything handed to me by the seller, but I haven't looked at the ECU to see what's all there.

I'm located in south beach (beale st. and bryant st.) next to the car pool on ramp to the bay bridge. If you see an all black car, with black rims and black tail lights, that's probably me.

 

I have a spare stock cat (upper), and a stock 02 axle back if you need them. I'm in San Jose.

 

The accessport is a little handheld device that connects to the OBD2 port. Your ECU is under the passenger front carpet. Sounds to me like the car has a tune on it for sure if it's pulling harder than other stock wrx's.

DO NOT CALL A SMOG SHOP AND ASK THEM THAT QUESTION THOUGH. They don't know if you're a CARB official fishing for licenses to pull and shops to fine so they will always tell you that your car will fail if modified at all. Your best bet is to get a referral from someone, guy who knows a guy style, who you can show up to and tell them So and So said you could help me out with a smog or some such.

 

I have a stock catback collecting dust in my garage. But the stock downpipe, that's mine to keep.

 

So I took it to the place I normally go to for car stuff. It failed, but when I asked by how much they said "it was pretty close, if you leave it here another day we could tune it a little and it would probably pass". So, amazingly it didn't fail on the visual. I also saw about 3 other WRXs in their shop, so I'm guessing it wasn't by accident that it passed visual.

Also might have found a DP for sale, waiting on response to my PM.

Thanks for all the help from everyone!

 

So you almost passed the sniffer test without any cats? I've been told that it is possible if the car gets hot enough. Buy that DP and you will have no problem, have seen some pretty crazy setups pass the sniffer test with the stock DP on.

 

Thanks for the advice. Now I'm looking for a midpipe w/ cat. I haven't searched the forum, but I'm going to now.

 

I have a stock downpipe for sale if you need one, just let me know.
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VAPORMATIC REVIEW

 

Got a DP now with both cats. Thanks guys.