In the early 80's Weber came out with a line of replacement carbs for imports and domestics, mostly 4 cylinder stuff. They wanted to get a CARB EO# so they would be legal to sell in California, which is a huge market. They spent the mega dollars necessary to do the testing, but ultimately failed their initial testing. Not because they increased emissions.......... because they were TOO clean!
Yes, CARB in it's infinite wisdom has a % you must be within as compared to an OEM legal carb to be a legal replacement. Now I understand not allowing a replacement to be worse, but you've got to be frickin kidding me that it also cannot be cleaner! So Weber had to re-calibrate their carbs to "dirty" them up to get back into the specs required for a CARB EO#. Delayed the sales a bit, and just made absolutely no sense to me.
Don't even get me started on the "failed the visual inspection" crap. A stock LS swap into an early Camaro without cats would be way cleaner than any of the stock V8's that came in the car; that swap is not legal with CARB though unless you swap every smog item with it and get it certified through a referee station. But no problem running the stock dirty small block carb setup, that's legal! What's under the hood should not matter if it passes at the pipe for the year and model car. But it's not about smog emissions with CARB, it's about power and money. You can't even buy a CARB legal catalytic converter in California anymore if you're not a certified smog repair or muffler shop. Yep, even a certified legal replacement cat is no longer legal for sale to me to replace a defective unit on my car/truck. Yeah, CARB is great!
|