Quote:
Originally Posted by Blown353
The dealer hosed you for sure... and there would be some legal recourse here if you call the bureau of automotive repair and tell them your story. They will likely pursue both the dealer and the smog shop and levy fines and/or take away their smog cert license but you won't get a dime out of it unless you take the dealer to court. The state is in business to ensure compliance of the businesses, not to compensate you for the dealer and shop's screwup.
However, you as the buyer should have done some research and verified that all the stuff was CARB legal. Sounds like you suspected it wasn't but because they waved a smog cert at you it was OK.
If you do take them to court it will be a difficult thing to prove. The dealer has a valid smog cert showing the car passed, you have a car with lots of mods that doesn't pass. You now have to convince the judge that the car was purchased as-is and you didn't add all the mods after the fact. It will be a tough thing to prove unless you have pictures of the car at the dealership while still in their possession. Now if the BAR nails the smog shop for illegal smogs you can pull that out in court to cast some doubt on the legality of the smog cert issued for your vehicle-- but it will still be difficult to prove without a doubt.
Unfortunately now that you've been sent to the referee the only way to get the car registered again will be to get the ref to sign it back off. This means exactly what it sounds like-- you either need to put all the stock parts back on or make sure you have CARB stickers for all your parts.
You're going to have to smog the car every 2 years anyways and it will need to pass-- now would be the time to scrounge all the stock or CARB parts needed to do so. Stock intercoolers are cheap, stock blowoffs are cheap (and on the MAF'd STI a recirc BOV is much better than a dump to atmosphere), stock downpipes are cheap. Whatever catback is on the car now should pass as long as it passed the decibel limit test which the ref might do. You could leave the FMIC bolted on and just remove the tubing to and from it. The Ref might not like that but it would be 100% legal. Put the stock tune back in the ECU and bring it back in. Plenty of subaru forums out there to look at to search for stock take-off parts. If you have a "friend" in the smog business you could get it funny-smogged but after a visit to the ref your VIN# is probably flagged in the DMV system for "test only" stations from here on out.
If you buy used off the forums, a stock IC, stock DP/cats, stock BOV, and stock intake should run you substantially less than $1000 (probably around $500) and it's all easy stuff to swap out.
Your story is exactly why I made my STI sneaky. I used a Borla twin-tip (more OEM looking) exhaust that was painted black and it was their quiet system, the catless downpipe was hi temp coated black and I also made a fake cat heatshield over it, Cobb accessport, etc. I also bought a wingless trunk from a guy off iclub.com and swapped that on so it wouldn't raise as many eyebrows from the cops. The car wasn't smog legal at all but it would pass a roadside visual with no issue and that's the important thing. If you can pass a visual they can give you a fix-it ticket for emissions because all the equipment appears to be there but isn't working properly, but if you fail a visual test they can impound the car on the spot if they want for removal of emissions equipment.
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Alright so where do I start haha. If I take the dealer to court it is going to basically be impossible to prove I didn't install all the stuff that's on there now. I have pictures of the car a few weeks after I bought it and bank statements to prove I didn't have that kind of cash just lying around but I'm sure they could counter that and say I had cash stuffed in my piggy bank.
As for getting CARB stickers I have called a few of the companies and they say all their parts are not for use on CA vehicles
except the company that made the exhaust they never got back to me. So I can't get CARB stickers because there aren't any.
When I get this car back to it's stock form I'll be doing the sneaky approach for sure. that's how I've done all my cars in the past. right now it's almost impossible to find my meth kit and lines. I like how you did the dp it's pretty much what I'm going to do to my u/pipe so that gets passed without losing any flow.
Right now my gf and I are doing internet searches on the dealership and the smog shop. were finding all sorts of odd things about the dealership. they are accredited by the BBB but you can't find them unless you do a search by address, and even that brings up a few other company names. and local dealers won't say who but a dealer in their general location changed their name because their rating on the BBB was an F and now with the new name they are an A- once again.
I'll get back with more details. Also I have the BAR and DMV investigations forms all printed out and ready to be filled in. I'm not gonna get burned by the law for buying what I thought was a sweet deal.