CA Smog Law, proposed changes Options

[scruz914]

Anyone know about this? I pulled it off of "TheSamba":

Current 30 year CA rolling smog rules may be thrown out.....

Next hearing date for AB2683 is May 19th, 2004 in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/ab_265...513_status.html

As amended, California vehicles with an original manufacturer year prior to 1976 would be exempt from getting the smogcheck though they would not be exempt from having the equipment on the vehicle. Bye-bye third party equipment to be legal.

The bill must be out of the Assembly and over to the Senate by May 28. With the budget on the agenda, that may be a tight priority schedule. DMV has said the deadline for planning mailer notices is July. If it isn't signed by July it means that the bill would need to be amended again to add a year.

[lapuwali]

Thanks. This bill has already been discussed at length on this board. I invite you both to do a search to read this discussion.

The existing law has always required compliance with the emissions regulations, they only exempted 30 year old cars from the biannual test. Third party equipment that affected emissions and were not specifically exempted through a CARB testing program have alwasy been disallowed.

However, one line in the new law indicates this MAY change this:

"This bill would instead exempt from the smog check requirements
, and the smog check compliance requirements, any motor
vehicle manufactured prior to the 1976 model-year."

The boldface stuff is new. I interpret this to mean '75 and older cars are exempt from the need to comply with the emissions requirements at all, not just from the test, as was the case before.