Why leave our houses at all?

If you end up pulling the injectors, it's super easy to do. The one thing unlike about the 2.5 is they really made everything easy to repair if you get stuck in the middle of no where.

If the engine is too hot, why not just drop in a lower degree thermostat? I actually thought it was better to run an engine hotter to pass the sniffer test??

The cats have to be good and warm to be working efficiently. But high combustion temps leads to higher NOX.

All this smog crap sucks. I hate how they are always moving the goal posts on us and how they care about shit that doesn't matter like headers, It shouldn't matter if my car has long tube headers if it runs as clean as it is suppose to.

My Typhoon, which is not near stock anymore, passed the sniffer test with flying colors but failed the visual. So you can be modified and still pass the sniffer test. They don't want you to be faster than a cop car and they want that CARB sticker money.

Larger manufacturers are not blameless in this. Some have actively campaigned for "official regulation". In economics it's known as regulatory capture. The mechanism allows a larger, better capitalized entity to gain a competitive advantage through law because their regulatory costs are a much smaller percentage of operational expenses compared to a small manufacturer. A few hundred grand here and there ain't such a big deal to Edelbrock, especially if they can turn right around and use an artificially scarce market to get a premium on a "certified" product.

That is true as well. Or you can be like me and find a good smog guy that doesn't care and buy whatever you want. Might cost you $250 like it did for me, but I'm okay with that. At least I run a cat and I know Im well within the smog limits, so I don't feel guilty, not even a little bit.