Stolen truck found after 30 years

elcamman50 said:

I live in San Diego County and have a CHP officer living in my neighborhood. He has told me they are going after people who have the Montana, South Dakota and Vermont tags on their cars. Vermont has recently, I have been told, stopped selling the Vermont titles and plates. What he told me, was that if you are in the military, then it is okay to have out of state plates, but if you driver's license is from California and you are a resident of California, your vehicle has to be registered in California. He said they are going to start aggressively pursuing these people. Just a wait and see, I guess.

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Maybe. If you have a home in another state and that vehicle is registered there because it spends more than 50% of its time out of state, that is perfectly legit. They still have to have probable cause for the initial stop. An out of state plate is not sufficient.

DoubleDingo said:

You're not in CA either. It's a whole different animal with the strict regulations. If it were a pre-75 rig I would definitely say do whatever, but even then, if I recall correctly you still have to pass to get it registered, so there we fall back to having factory installed components, whether to pass as an original setup or having all of the modern bits and pieces which is even more stringent than the old stuff, just more readily available.

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No inspection whatsoever on anything 1975 or older for gas or 1997 or older on diesel. I own an example of both.

Frankenchevy said:

I guess the question is if they considering this a change of ownership. That is the qualifying event for a smog in a non smog county.

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I think it doesn't matter, especially in this instance, it's been gone for 30 years, is no longer CARB compliant, so to get it registered again, even in a smog-free-county, let alone the bay area where the OP shows they live, it's going to require every bit and piece to pass visual and sniffer, no matter if it's like a factory 80s square or a modified square with the modern fancy electronics.

There's a thread over on CK5 recently where a guy got his truck to pass smog with a non-original engine and a bunch of aftermarket parts. It's doable, the parts just need chosen wisely if it's not the original engine. I'll see if I can find it again and link it here.

DoubleDingo said:

You're not in CA either. It's a whole different animal with the strict regulations. If it were a pre-75 rig I would definitely say do whatever, but even then, if I recall correctly you still have to pass to get it registered, so there we fall back to having factory installed components, whether to pass as an original setup or having all of the modern bits and pieces which is even more stringent than the old stuff, just more readily available.

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That is the whole reason I have kept my truck registered and insured thru out my build. I do have all the parts he needs to get it back together if it is a 350, smog pump, manifolds with air lines, complete engine, everything albeit these are 73 era smog stuff. the only thing missing is the vent canister but you can buy those cheap.

Somewhere along the way I lost my smog pump. The steel lines were all rotted out so I guess that's when I took it off. Funny thing is it passed the sniffer test without the pump back when they were still stuffing the probe in the exhaust.

hack_man said:

Somewhere along the way I lost my smog pump. The steel lines were all rotted out so I guess that's when I took it off. Funny thing is it passed the sniffer test without the pump back when they were still stuffing the probe in the exhaust.

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The bad thing bout emissions testing in CA, even if it passes the sniffer test with flying colors, if it doesn't pass visual it's instant fail. Pass visual with flying colors but fail sniffer, instant fail. There are tons of C10s out there that can't pass emissions in CA because of missing or inoperable factory parts so automatic fail due to failed visual.

Mine was an 85 350 from the OR but had CA emissions - I kept alot of it (pipes and all) so if there is anything particular you need and I still have it, its yours for the asking-shipping.

Gone are the days of being able to take it to a shop in the area that was well known for not doing a real visual. Back in the 90's 2000's, there was always a shop in the area you could pull your highly modified vehicle into and the guy would plug into it, run the sniffer test, and never even open the hood. I had some wild vehicles even up to 2010 timeframe that had no problem passing smog in California... as long as you don't look to close. 2005 Neon SRT-4 had a full custom turbo kit and 1000cc injectors, dyno'd at 471WHP in high octane mode, passed the sniffer with flying colors.

Bextreme04 said:

Gone are the days of being able to take it to a shop in the area that was well known for not doing a real visual. Back in the 90's 2000's, there was always a shop in the area you could pull your highly modified vehicle into and the guy would plug into it, run the sniffer test, and never even open the hood. I had some wild vehicles even up to 2010 timeframe that had no problem passing smog in California... as long as you don't look to close. 2005 Neon SRT-4 had a full custom turbo kit and 1000cc injectors, dyno'd at 471WHP in high octane mode, passed the sniffer with flying colors.

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any old pics/ and or a tale to tell what became of said racing neon... for this thread?

goldpack said:

any old pics/ and or a tale to tell what became of said racing neon... for this thread?

https://www.gmsquarebody.com/threads/show-your-sick-toy.42297/

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I'd have to go digging. I pulled all the aftermarket stuff and sold it before I moved to Arizona for school. I bought it new through AAFES military sales in Germany in 2005 after getting back from my 1st Iraq deployment. They delivered it to me there and I drove it completely stock for a year before getting sent to Ft. Hood. The military shipped it to Texas for me and then I started messing with it. I drove it back to California while on leave and my buddy helped me build the turbo manifold and down pipe to fit a bigger custom 60-1 turbo and large front mount intercooler. Then I did bit by bit modifications to it over the years until finally running it low on oil and spinning a bunch of bearings right before my last deployment in 2009. It sat at my parents house in California during the deployment and then got a new shortblock that I drove around for a year on California tags before I returned it to stock form before I sold it.

It was a monster though. I had a Greddy E-mange piggyback system and a Mopar Stage 2 ECM with the control system on it, so you could adjust the boost on the fly and adjust the timing tables for 100 octane with a push button. It made ~360Whp on pump gas an 21PSI of boost. the 471 was on 100 Octane and 24PSI of boost with the timing kicked up. It would immediately smoke the tires and was pretty much unusable in high octane mode. The trans would not have survived it if the tires hooked at all.

Probably had some vicious torque steer!

Bextreme04 said:

Gone are the days of being able to take it to a shop in the area that was well known for not doing a real visual. Back in the 90's 2000's, there was always a shop in the area you could pull your highly modified vehicle into and the guy would plug into it, run the sniffer test, and never even open the hood. I had some wild vehicles even up to 2010 timeframe that had no problem passing smog in California... as long as you don't look to close. 2005 Neon SRT-4 had a full custom turbo kit and 1000cc injectors, dyno'd at 471WHP in high octane mode, passed the sniffer with flying colors.

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We still have shops like that around here. Mostly the mom and pop ones that have been around for 30+ years. Heck they knew me so well that gave me a pass one year on rust thru holes and just said "get her fixed for next year". Most shops would have failed me on the spot.

I don't understand the logic in that - if it passes the sniffer and the emissions are within spec, why do they care HOW you get there? There is nothing magical about the original factory parts - that was what they used because that was what was available at the time. It seems counterproductive to disallow using parts that perform as well or better on the pipe sniff if the objective is clean exhaust.