CA CARB Certified High Performance Catalytic Converters

[needspeed]

Compared to OE, do they exist? Not even Fabspeed's 300 Cell metal substrate exhaust is CARB certified.

[juanbenae]

I believe it takes a ton of money to get any after market parts CARB certified and frankly the 911 hobbyist would not generate enough units sold to justify the cost of the cert. ive often wondered why someone has not tried to get an EFI system developed for the CIS motors that might be CARB recognized. you'd think the modern mapping and so forth could produce more HP with the same or better emission rates as the original CIS system.

The MSD ignition boxes are CARB recognized and come with a fancy aluminum sticker declaring such that must be posted on the car. MSD across many platforms could justify the expense of CARB certification I figure, and an ignition system is less influential when it comes to emissions than a cat.

[911h20]

https://ssl.arb.ca.gov/AftermarketParts/catalysts

Here is link to the CARB website that list what's approved.

[911h20]

https://www.magnaflow.com/catalytic-converters/catalytic-converters/#

also this.

[juanbenae]

looked over h20 links and they seem to be all universal that are likely going to require a bunch of fab work to get them to mount to the existing 911 exhaust. prolly not high flow models, and unless there is a stock photo for them all at the magnaflow site my 1st statement may even be more relevant.

[HaroldMHedge]

I just found an exact fit for my 87 CA car on the MagnaFlow website inputting my car info. They also listed a universal one as well. I'm not sure if it's high flow.

[gshiwota]

I'm in CA and a buddy of mine got around this (not legal but it worked). He found that most CARB approved cats are identical to their 49-state cat counterparts except for the CARB certification number stamped onto the unit.

The CARB number is required to pass the visual inspection so my buddy took his harbor freight die set and stamped the CARB number into the cat before installing. When he took it to smog, the tech saw the CARB number and passed the vehicle.

I'm not condoning illegal activities especially against our wonderful CARB organization. But if I were, I'd also mention that you could look up the list of CARB #s on the California website so you can stamp the correct CARB ID onto your aftermarket cat (they vary by mfg). You can even find pics online of where these CARB numbers are stamped onto the units. YMMV.

[Synchro Joe]

I ended up swapping out my converter and changing out the O2 sensor on my '88 Carrera to get through the SMOG ritual when living in CA. Now I don't have to worry about it and replaced the converter with a Fabspeed bypass.

The generic converters pretty much bolt right in, but you can't use the little heat shield without some mounting gymnastics. I just left mine off. The DEC PO82605 Direct Fit California legal converter worked fine. Was like $330 then and had 5 year/50K warranty. There's a Calif. related statement that you fill out and keep with the car, and mail a card back to DEC. Never had any issues with it. It now resides in my parts collection.