As mentioned before my understanding is 1975 was when cats were standard, but emissions equip dates back to the late 60s. These laws won't affect only late model cars, unless the EPA comes out and specifies that. There are many cars from the 70s, be it racer or street cars, that had emiss. equip that left the car long ago.
Besides my pro touring car I have a Nova set up for street /strip with an old school n/a SBC engine that has a pretty nasty solid cam in it. There's no way on this planet that engine will pass a sniffer test at idle and likely runs a little rich at full throttle. I used to drive this car daily daily (when I could afford to before I got married and had kids, lol) and on a good day with it's 4.56 gears it got 6 mpg. Along with perhaps 10s of thousands of other enthusiasts, not all of us has swapped an emissions friendly LS motor into our cars, nor do we all want to. So we're stuck with non-modern engines that don't burn cleaner, aren't more fuel efficient, don't get better gas mileage, and even with a pair of cats likely still won't pass a sniffer test.
But, these cars haul beans as they are built to do. Laws like this will shut them down, and that's unfortunate. Again I say it will be pretty boring to go to a race event and see a bunch of cars running down a track with engines restored to their low hp smog equip laden engines. Where's the fun in that?
Ultimately this is give and take from both sides. The EPA can't just sit back and say race cars are a direct detriment to the cleanliness of our air, they have ti realize we're a very small part of a very large problem, and part of the history of America. Boats produce emissions, airplanes produce emissions, off road bikes and other toys produce emissions, so in all that why are they now targeting auto racers only? What's next after us? Boat racing? Air shows? Motocross? ...
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-Ben, Creative Director
Last edited by Ben@SpeedTech; 02-22-2016 at 11:37 AM.
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