George
I’ve performed smog inspections for a number of years, and I’m in Los Angeles, as you know
The provision for failing because of visible smoke happened several years ago
Just WHERE did you hear this, or read this . . . seems like a cruel joke and/or an urban legend
The visual smoke test requirement appears to be a relatively new BAR test, initiated March 2008.
http://1351687.sites.myregisteredsite.com/Service%20Bay%20Management/Visible%20Smoke%20Test.pdf
I don’t see any references to what they did before however, when a car was brought in with so much smoke it could damage the emissions testing requirement. Going from memory on that one, but I’ll admit my memory isn’t my best feature … lol
As the philosopher said: “Happiness is just good health and a bad memory” …
db ;; are you saying that even before march 2008 the car owner would automatically fail the the car not otherwise be tested w/visible smoke out the tailpipe?
You realize this is March, 2017, that was added 9 years ago.
In Nevada a visual smoke inspection has been part of the emissions inspection since the 1980’s, perhaps longer. The DMV emissions lab has wobbled back and forth on if smoke from oil leaking on manifolds and pipes is a cause for failure.
What did they do there in Nevada before they instituted the visual smoke out the tailpipe test? And the car was billowing blue smoke like crazy? Did the emissions tester have the authority to fail it b/c otherwise testing might damage the emissions testing equipment? Would it pass b/c it couldn’t be tested? Or what? I think in Calif they added that test b/c there was a sort of scandal that hit the newspapers about really smoky cars automatically passing emissions, b/c the gtesting shops refused to test them. And the emissions testers didn’t have authority to fail based on a visual observation of the tailpipe.
9 years doesn’t seem that long ago to an old folk like me … 