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CARB is the California Air Resources Board, something like the EPA's state office or flunky, I'm not really sure, but they are the deciders on what is or isn't legal. If a vendor submits an item for testing and it works as well or better than the factory item it can get a Exemption Order number, EO#. As long as the cat on your car has a EO# appropriate for your car it will pass the visual inspection.
"Any" older looking cat might also pass the visual, but the law changed Jan 09 and now generic universal cats are not allowed "to be installed", only cats tested specifically for the vehicle with a EO# to prove it, may be legally installed.
Cars have to pass first the visual inspection, and then the sniffer test, fail on either, and you fail. Its a gotcha for the smog tech, since they must sign off that it passes visual, so if it fails the sniffer from something that should have failed in the visual, maybe they get inspected or something.
Factory cats are NOT high flow, they are old style air injection thermal reactors. Many are still good on 200k mile cars, but replace them with a modern design and you should pick up 5 or 10 hp and still be clean. The catch is that with some of the super high flow cats, running even a short time with a bad mixture can ruin them. I think there are reasonable choices that both flow pretty good, and last a long time. That said it may be hard to find a shop in Calif that is willing to install anything other than factory or Carb approved for that specific model.
85/86 928 had a wider intake, requiring a special air filter box and intake tubes, which are NLA, no longer available. People frequently fail inspection trying to work around using the factory air filter box or intake tubes.
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