California smog police are waiting...?

[Kneale Brownson]

When you have that engine in the car with all the attendant plumbing and 
wiring, how easy will it be to read those numbers?  Smear some grease on 
them and see how legible they become.


At 10:02 AM 08/15/2001 -0700, ed armstrong wrote:

>Hi gang,
>
>This post is for primarily California listers but
>others feel free to chime in.
>
>As I am closing in on the completion of my turbo swap
>in a 1988 90q some issues are concerning me with smog
>laws. In my beautiful but increasingly legislated home
>state of California there is a law that says one
>cannot swap an earlier model year engine into any car
>older than about ~1973. That is you cannot take a 1985
>engine and swap it into a 1990 model year car.
>
>There in lies my diliema, as I bought a junkyard 5000
>turbo MC engine from a 1987 model year. On the engine
>itself is stamped "86" on the lower right
>(non-manifold side) with  what looks like a production
>serial number stamped near the the head (but on the
>block).
>
>Does anyone have any experience as to how strict these
>smog police are when they inspect an engine
>conversion. Do they look at the stamped year date and
>production numbers to see which model car the engine
>was derived from ?? Does it make any difference to
>them that the MC-1 engine was the same for the
>1986-1989.5 production run ?? I'm actually toying with
>the idea of changing some of the numbers to "make" it
>an 1988 or 1989 engine. Doesn't look like its hard to
>do with some subtle grinding and renumbering.
>
>Alternatively, all the smog equipment like O2 sensor
>and cat converter will be retained, so it may pass the
>so-called visual part of the bi-annual smog inpection
>if I get some bozo inspector. It will certainly pass
>the actual smog test of pollutant measurements, I have
>not doubt about that.
>
>My next smog check is in 20 months so I have some
>time. But I'd like to address some these issues now.
>Any thoughts on this ??
>
>  -ed
>
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