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Texas emissions test / inspection

1.9K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  gkanga  
#1 ·
Hello fellow Texans,
I've been doing a bunch of research before buying my first Lotus in the (hopefully) near future. I've been trying to find out what kinds of mods that aren't too extreme like sport cats, aftermarket exhaust, superchargers, etc. will generally still pass Texas inspection without having to change a bunch of stuff every year before taking the car in.

I know this is a pretty open ended question but I haven't been able to find much information on this topic searching around and digging through old posts on this forum. Hopefully that means it isn't really a problem but that might be overly optimistic!

Thanks
 
#2 ·
Where do you live? The county you live in affects some of what gets tested. In major metros (Dallas, Travis, Harris, etc.) they do a sniffer that is more stringent than say out in BFE.

To be honest, I have *never* had issues, with either visual or sniffer testing, even in cases where I may been missing an emissions component, like say, a cat. Wait I take that back, I once had a dealer fail my Evo for having a test pipe. But even then, just swapped back and I was set.

Also I assume you're talking about an Elige? With modern EFI, and most credible aftermarket mods having a well integrated look, I would not worry at all about it.

Now, if you're talking about a G car Espirit with an engine swap running on a MS system, than I don't know. ;)
 
#6 ·
My inspection in San Marcos goes like this.

Inspector get in the car, says oh, gets out, asks me to drive it, we drive 200 yards, hit the brakes and pull into his shop.
He gets his gas cap tested, walks beside the car, looks at the gas cap cover, shakes his head walks back to his computer and says that will be $7.

So uhh, easy down here :)
 
#8 ·
Can concur: in Houston...

1. Provide insurance
2. Brake test 25 -> 0 in under some silly number of feet
3. Plug into OBDII and check sensors
4. Test fuel cap
5. Pay the man

Last year, the tech that did it was so flustered at having to inspect the Elise that he failed to locate the correct fuel cap (which is silly, since it's a common one). He just ended up passing it on principle.