ECU Tuning Banned in California -- We're Hosed

[Music] back in 1966 california first established tail pipe emission standards in order to address the ongoing problem of smog in southern california now if you lived anywhere in the los angeles basin in the 1970s you probably remember the thick brown haze floating over us making our sky look more like mars than earth i remember schools cancelling pe time because of the health hazards and i remember the asthma issues that i and many other children had as regulations were put into place car manufacturers were required to come up with some solutions the first thing they did catalytic converters catalytic converters started showing up on cars in the early 1970s right about the time of the gas crunch in the united states unleaded fuel replaced leaded fuel around the same time and hot rodders of that era were screaming that it was the end of the car hobby what are we gonna do but it wasn't the end ford's eq4 ecu caused great concern that it would be the end of the car obvi several years later it wasn't onboard diagnostic systems and the earliest check engine lights first appeared on cars in the united states in 1988 in 1996 the obd2 system was supposed to be the end of the car hobby and modifications it wasn't in 2006 governor arnold schwarzenegger signed assembly bill ab32 a sweeping set of regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gases from motor vehicles now there's some hysterical irony there given the fact that our governator was well known for driving his giant gross polluting humvee which got about eight miles to the gallon and as what has become a consistent theme for government officials in this country they continue to create laws that apply to citizens but not to them and that's the same pretty much around the world while citizens of the world are forced to move to hybrids ulet vehicles pisa vehicles sue lev vehicles and evs all of our elected fictionals are still running around in escalades suburbans or other land yachts that get seven miles to the gallon rules for thee but not for me as the saying goes here in california up until recently we used to have biennial smog checks for low-income families who rely on their cars which are usually older and in disrepair this was a financial burden for them especially if their car couldn't be smug but starting in 2019 if your car was less than four years old you could pay a smog abatement fee instead of getting a smog check for the first eight years that your vehicle is registered so let me get this straight you shouldn't be driving a polluting car unless you pay us a fee maybe it's not about this mug today any vehicle eight years or older still has to get a smog check every two years but in july of 2021 californians were shocked with this the california bureau of automotive repair or bar as locals call it started enforcing a policy focusing on computer tuning in today's computer controlled cars essentially if your car has any kind of ecu tuning done that hasn't officially been reviewed and approved by carb your car will fail a smog test and cannot be registered any modification to a car's engine or related systems must be certified by carb and must be assigned an exemption order commonly called an eo number and it's been this way for many years decades in fact with the announcement that carb will be checking for any ecu tunes hobbyists are again freaking out in companies that sell tuning products are scared that they may be ultimately driven out of business sema the specialty equipment marketing association which is a non-profit that does many things including ensuring the prosperity and survival of the automotive aftermarket has now stepped into the fray siemens director of omissions a fellow by the name of peter trey said some people are likely fearful of or ignorant of the process of eo certification while others are willingly being belligerent when it comes to the rules those in the latter category particularly those involved in the diesel truck tuning scene are largely responsible for the new rules these are his words not mine in case you missed that let me say that again the diesel truck tuning crowd played a big role in the crackdown on ecu tunes that's right the rolling coal posse messed it up for everyone and diesel tuning shops have been shut down or find literally millions of dollars for their actions in recent years why single amount i guess because you can see the black smoke for a country mile i suppose but if i'm being honest there's plenty enough flame to go around a lot of people have been doing it for a very long time and getting away with it the other thing is petulant showboaters at car shows who rev their beat down 15 year old vqs owners of straight pipe cars who simply cannot resist bouncing off the rev limiter and those with pops and bangs tunes certainly haven't helped to portray the automotive hobbyists as law-abiding citizens i'm not singling anybody out i'm just saying none of this is helping and so we all suffer for the actions of a field which is an age-old story right but before you say well it doesn't affect me in my state well maybe not yet but what happens in california invariably spreads like herpes to other states it's already happened in many other states and it will continue to get worse the senior executive i just mentioned explained that only a tiny number of california vehicles are likely to be in violation of the new rule what basically he said that bar shared data with sema estimating that out of the roughly one million vehicles that undergo smog testing each month only around 150 to 300 cars are expected to fail due to an illegal ecu tune well that may be true but i can tell you this that if you go to the cars and coffee event that i go to every week there's about 3 000 cars there and i can probably promise you that at least 500 of them are rolling dirty and probably many many many more so those are the ones i got caught so before you say hey i'll just register my car in another state like montana or whatever chp is hip to that hello sir i see you have montana plates why do you have a california driver's license and your car is registered in montana please step out of the car sir old trick and the chp is hip to that but while it's possible to have residency in two states your car insurance company needs to have that information because your car rates your car insurance rates are based on this information where is your car garage the simple fact of the matter is that regulations will be tightened to a point where almost no tuner companies will be able to afford to go through the comprehensive and expensive process of c bar certification process it's just it's getting very difficult for these companies in the old days of companies labeling their parts off-road use only wink wink are over and some tuning companies are just basically leaving the state physically and others won't even sell certain parts to california anymore there's more information at this link so if you think that the california smog police are getting to be like the gestapo we actually have it pretty good here how can i say that and it pains me to say that let me tell you about some car modification restrictions in other countries austria you have to submit an application for what you want to do show them what you change and then they can either accept it or decline it after an inspection not terrible brazil modifications are generally allowed but must be inspected for safety okay i can get behind that imagine if we have common sense rules like that in this country canada for a country so stringent on face masks pretty much anything goes with car modifications but ride height is something that canadian cops seem to care most about which is interesting maybe because the road sucked there england's car modifications aren't overly restricted per se but your car insurance is car insurance rates are tied directly to your list of modifications the more you do the more you pay why because each and every mod must be reported to your insurance company if you don't your policy might be boarded if you found to have an accident you didn't report the mods want to add a supercharger or turbo to your car get ready to pay your insurance will go up as much as 132 if your insurance was 494 pounds or euros or pints of guinness or whatever currency you guys are using over there after brexit your insurance after adding that supercharger or turbocharger would be around 1146 pounds euros or pints whatever even adding racing stripes drives up your insurance up about 30 percent i'm not kidding google it wow when did britain vote to allow insurance companies to rate customers oh yeah now i remember britain hates cars and wants everyone on buses or on bicycles apparently the more you do to your car the greater the chance that the car was going to get nicked because most people in england don't have garages i have one question for you britain your country has existed for what over a thousand years have you not had the time to build some bloody garages by now stop parking on the street easy to say right now we go to germany uh motorists in germany can only fit tuv approved parts to their cars tuvs stands for technicshare uber volcan and translates to technical inspection association in other words any part that you want to install must have tuv certification for that exact part on your exact year make and model of car trends like stance cars carolina squatters and low riders are completely verboten yeah but in germany's defense they're keeping cheap chinese crap off the cars and making the roads safer so it's hard to find fault with those set of rules grease no modifications allowed if your car is found to have modifications no questions asked i just grabbed the car and throw it away immediately israel my friend shahar moved to america from israel why any car modifications in israel are strictly forbidden it's even illegal to change your wheel size so he literally packed up his entire family and moved to california just so he could do stuff to his cars and mexico apparently have other things to worry about like corrupt cops bribery among government officials and little thing called drug cartels some mexican officials don't pay attention to car modifications and based on the cars that i see coming across the border from mexico they don't seem to care all that much about safety either india the supreme court recently made a ruling that most modifications are illegal but you can change your tires your paint or wrap it you can add window tint and you can change your suspension but that's about it netherlands or holland as we call it almost no rules exist as long as the car passes its mot inspection for safety okay not terrible anything you put in a car should be safe russia all modifications are illegal but my good friend al-shaad says don't worry you just need to give palitza some vodka or rubley to make bribe sometimes it pays to live in a totally in oligarchy doesn't it but it's kind of sad when russia enjoys greater freedoms than we do here in america in the united arab emirates they used to be pretty open to car modification but in 2017 all that kind of changed but generally speaking they are trying to make sure that if your stock car was designed to make about 200 horsepower and you want to turn it into a 1000 horsepower tire fryer then you're going to need to have all the supporting modifications and safety equipment frankly in my view that's actually pretty smart and that would work well over here as well so while some countries have no restrictions some have a few and others are locked down like a siberian gulag it turns out that california is not the most restrictive when it comes to car mods but the signal being sent is clear governments around the world are coming for our cars they want gasoline-powered cars off the road right now if they can pull it off but isn't it hysterical that most politicians around the world are still driving in or riding in big luxury vehicles shouldn't they be leading by example the problem with humans on this planet is we continue to allow government officials to make rules from which they're exempt so while most reasonable people agree that reducing pollution is necessary and a good idea the small size of the automotive hobby should not be so harshly regulated perhaps the compromise is restricting annual mileage and paying a fee for the privilege of having mods on your car based on your actual emission output there's probably no chance of having this kind of thing happen and so we can probably expect further crackdowns to a point where this hobby no longer exists sema hasn't brought this option that i just suggested to the california states legislature as far as i know and so i have to wonder if sema really has any power to do anything but beg and to be honest it's always been illegal to alter or remove smog or emissions controls so while there has been no new law addressing ecu tuning this is a new way of checking for violations and enforcing the rules these are interesting times my friends my advice go buy the car with the most factory horsepower that you can afford and enjoy it until all gas stations are extinct that's going to be it for this episode everybody thanks so much for watching tune in again next time we'll see you later [Music] you

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 95,708

Rating: 4.8837771 out of 5

Keywords: ECU Tuning Banned, Californina Smog laws, ECU tuning, ECUtek, AEM, street racing

Id: dcgdzbazk94

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021