Smog Check II In California

This website is dedicated to timely and accurate disemmination of legislative information on Smog Check II and Reformulated Gas that relates to the California car hobby.

• It does not give legal advice but expresses opinions on proposed legislation affecting the California Car Hobby.
• It seeks the alliance of car people wherever to fight "Anti-Car Legislation".
• Opinions are not for sale and represent a consumer/hobbyist point of view.
• There is no organization to join. Watch the website.
• It does not lobby Sacramento directly but lobbies by disseminating information to the car community at car shows
• It does not allow solicitation of funds from the website nor accept money to maintain it.
• It is not responsible for the accuracy of websites it links to.

EMAIL ME

Email Len

The change you see is prompted by the fact that Yahoo Geocities shutdown effective Oct 26, 2009 and wanted people to go to their Pay Server. I chose no and moved to Angelfire. So I found Angelfire which is a free web hosting service. www.smogrfg.com is re-directed to this server. I am not going away.

I have put up a Heads Up to make you aware of the issues on the fire. I will be expanding the site. My goal in the re-write is to eliminate much of duplication that was present in the Geocities website.

What should we expect in 2010:

• Go to California Inspection & Maintenance Review Committee and read the 2009 Report. Also read the presentations. If you stay up on the reports and presentations you will be knowledgeable on what is going on.
• If I said "Titles Unlimited" or the "Boyd Coddington Issue" you would know what I am talking about. This involved buying an "Out Of State Title". It also involved understating the true purchase value to avoid paying high taxes. The state claims there are 70000 vehicles in this category and is looking to collect back fees in the amount of $240 million in back fees.
• To resolve this the legislature passed ab619 in 2008. Go to California Legislative Database and read the SEMA bill. How are people supposed to comply with this? At this point that is unknown.
• ....More as time permits.

One of the problems of the Geocities website was that there were too many disconnected pieces of information. I am trying to correct that here by making the result more compact.

Websites Repeatedly Referred To Here

State Government & State Legislation

California State Senate California State Assembly California State Legislation State and Local Government On The Internet

Federal Government & Federal Legislation

Congressional Senate Congressional House of Representatives Congressional Legislation US Supreme Court

State Bureacracies

California Bureau of Automotive Repair California Air Resources Board California Inspection & Maintenance Review Committee

Federal Bureacracies

Car Hobby Related

Tutorial on Vehicle Overheating Association of California Car Clubs SEMA Central Valley Classics Drive Online

SB42 Smog Exemption

The 66-73 biennial smog exemption starts with SB42 Senator Quentin Kopp 1997. It exempted 66-73 vehicles from the biennial smog check and beginnig in 2003 was to add a year to the exemption beginning in 2003. The rolling exemption stopped in 2004 with 1975 vehicles.The bill that stopped it was ab2683 from 2004.

While section 44011 of the Health and Safety Code exempts 66-75 vehicles from the biennial smog check, these vehicles are still required under Vehicle Code 27165 to have the original emissions equipment on them. However that is not being enforced. 90% of the 66-75 vehicles do not have the smog equipment. It has been removed and thrown away. If the biennial smog exemption is revoked a lot of vehicles would not be able to meet smog requirements.

Now look at the 2009 Report of the California Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee for July 2009. The committee is recommending revoking the SB42 exemption and making mandatory the response to remote sensing. I am opposed.

Remote Sensing

The Remote Sensing Specifcation is 50809 dated June 2002. Go to the website below to locate the specification. It may be necessary to make calls to Sacramento to get the spec.

California Department of General Services

To read the Remote Sensing Report go to the link below.

CARB Remote Sensing Report

What's Wrong With Remote Sensing

• Remote Sensing sees 1 second of data and tries to make a valid comparison with a 90 second dynamometer run. You can't do it.
• CARB called in 1000 vehicles that failed remote sensing for a dynamometer test. 50% of those vehicles passed the dyno test.
• In the audit of the remote sensing results in Colorado there was an 82% false fail rate.
• Remote Sensing is a measure of your vehicle emissions by placing an Infrared Laser Beam across a freeway On-Ramp or Our ff-Ramp. It sniffs your exhaust and takes a picture of your license plate.
  • The infrared beam is at 14 inches above ground. It is precisely this feature that is its akilies heal.
    • A vehicle emission measurement consists of an Infrared Beam measurement of your exhaust and a picture of your license plate.
    • The computer event begins when you break the beam and ends when you exit the beam with a measurement and a picture being recorded.
    • For normal vehicles that is OK but Semi-Trailers are at 4 feet about the ground. So remote sensing will create an event across every axle. This is an invalid event. Since SEMIs are not part of this system there would be 7 invalid events for each SEMI.
  • Remote Sensing will not work at multilane on-ramps because of the geometry of event start/stop.
  • In general you will find it at on-ramps where the Vehicle Specific Power corresponds to a moderate acceleration.
  • The license plate reader has some issues
    • A trailer hitch ball is enough to cause the scanner to pickup the wrong letter. A "B" could be misinterpreted as a "P" and vice-versa. "E" and "F" can be mismatched.
    • The addition of a license plate frame can obscure the lower part of a letter.
    • Sun Glare can obscure a license plate.

Why Am I Opposed To Remote Sensing?

• Go to the California State Legislation website above, select CA Law, click Vehicle Code followed by search.
• Read vehicle code 27156 of the Vehicle Code. You are required to have the smog equipment on your vehicle at all times.
• Now go back instead and pick Health & Safety Code.
• Read Health & Safety Code 44011, 44013(c) and 44081.
  • 44011 exempts you from the biennial test but not from having the smog equipment on the vehicle.
  • The SB42 smog exemption has been widely incorrectly intrepreted in the car community as exempting you from smog....period. This interpretation is wrong.
  • If call in for Remote Sensing is made mandatory, the SB42 smog exemption will not protect you.
  • You could be caused to put the smog equipment back on your vehicle (If you can find it).
• Is that possible? Go to the Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee website above, select reports and look at the 2009 report. The recommendation to make call-in mandatory is on page 10.
• Yes it can happen.

Hotrod Titling Issue Resolved

Congratulations SEMA on helping California Resolve the thorny Hotrod Titling Issue

SEMA Action Network Angelfire - Free Home Pages
Free Web Building Help
Angelfire HTML Library
HTML Gear - free polls, guestbooks, and more!

Email: ltrimlet@pacbell.net