Mike Hadz

My car has eibach springs so ofcourse it's a bit lower then factory and i have no lifts or anything, are you meaning to say you actually crawl under your car at ground level and swap the x pipe?

!KLeech!

yeah it takes 30 minutes to change a midpipe, its like 9 bolts all together. probably the easiest thing to do to a mustang lol just buy a jack and jack stands. problem solved.

Mike Hadz

18 live at home just out of the question atm, would have jackstands etc if i lived on own, but thanks

trailor

you could just roll up on wood blocks or phonebooks. has the same effect. i have actually done this one before when a jack was not handy

kast1376

I live in Ca. There is NO smog-legal aftermarket midpipe. None, nada. You can either rock the stocker, or get an aftermarket catted X. You will have to swap it out every 2 years to pass smog if you do this, or find a place that is gonna clean-pipe you. (Honestly though, it is usually much more to clean pipe than to pay a shop to do the swap for you.)

Only shorty headers are legal here, and they have to have a CARB number. No number, its not legal (Even if it doesn't make a difference in your smog output.)

I have never gotten in trouble due to my aftermarket mid-pipe. (I haven't tried to pass a smog test with it.) Every cop who has looked at it sees the cats and lets it go. Unless you get pulled over by a Mustang fan, odds are a cop isn't going to have a clue how many cats or pre-cats there are supposed to be on your car. But an Off-road pipe is always given away by the smell, and no cats

cliffyk

That part about how they can just pull you over and go though an inspection would all by itself be enough for me to find someplace else to live.

No inspections of any sort here in Florida. In a rare moment of sanity, several years ago (nearly 20 now), the Florida legislature realised the 98% of the cars were passing the smog tests (it was only in the non-rural counties) and the whole thing cost more than it was worth--so they dropped it...

kast1376

Cliffy that will usually happen to guys running longtubes and off road pipes. Honestly, if you are gonna run that in CA, you might as well get used to being pulled over. I have a cousin who is a cop where I live and according to him it has less to do with smog laws, and more to do with giving noise ordinance tix. (Guess which one puts money into the city coffers?)

Eh. All my family is here, and it is an hour to good snow and 2 hours to big waves. Hard to argue with that!

cliffyk

The fine revenue is what drives traffic enforcement everywhere...

kast1376

Yeah, it is a bummer.

The NEW ****-esque thing here is portable smog stations. Supposedly they are doing it to see if the smog program works (and probably catch places that are clean-piping). They claim random, but I have been pulled into em 3 times so far. They keep track of your plate and VIN, so after passing the 1st time, you would think that they would wave you through (3 times in a month), but they don't.

Funny thing is, I passed with the Bassani Catted X (barely passed the sniffer, but it counts!), and the tech missed the fact it was an aftermarket X somehow.

WishIhadaTerminator

+1

I've been dealing with this same issue. If you're in good with a smog guy you can get away with longtubes and cats. (unless you goose it around a cop) Otherwise you're kind of SOL in CA. From what I understand aftermarket shorties are a waste of time and money relative to gains.
To stay 100% legal you have to stay with just catbacks.

If you want to stay with stock headers and go mid...I talked to the guys at MRT, they have a catted H that will work great with stock headers. Two high-flow cats as opposed to the four restrictive ones in our stock mid-pipe. They're still technically illegal in CA. But the guys at MRT say they've sold a bunch of them to CA owners and never heard a complaint about them not passing emissions. If you want to take a chance I say go for it, they look like a quality piece of hardware.