Hey, maybe someone knows WA law and can help me. I have a '02 996TT that has a salvage title. Stolen car, insurance paid off, only minor damage, recovered, and I got a screamin deal. My question is; do I have to have catalytic converters operable on this car to register it. I'm in the process of major mechanical upgrades (K24/20's, larger IC,headers, exhaust, 60lb injectors, throttle body upgrade, Y-pipe, airbox, crank pulley, flywheel and about anything else I can probable do without internals). So do I have to run cats to be legal in WA? Thanks to everyone for sharing.

 

My former 996 gt3 passed emissions with no cats... Passed emissions means you get tabs and are ready to go

 

To answer your question, yes you need cats to be street legal in Washington State.

However, many of us on here, including myself, don't have cats installed in the car. The way the state currently test emissions on OBD2 car's, is by scanning the ECU for fault codes and checking the readiness sensors. With no cats, it will cause the secondary o2 sensors to throw a code, the good news is you can easily have a tuner code out these faults. As long as your not throwing a code, or have a check engine light on, you'll pass.

On my car I just had a tuner code them out for $50. I've also heard of people using some kind of spacer to space out the secondary o2 to not throw a code.

Hope that helps.

 

Spark plug anti fouler

 

It depends what city/county you have the car registered in. Population density is used to determine where cars are required to be smogged and where they don't. Even within King county there are different standards depending on where you live. Since I live in a more rural area, cars registered where I live do not require smog testing, whereas cars in Seattle, Bellevue, and other more populous areas do. If getting through smog proves difficult for you based on your situation, I think you can dream up an easy solution based on what I just wrote. Best wishes!

 

It can be done, most popular route is to deviate the secondary 02 sensor out of the main exhaust stream at the mounting bung, you can also limit the amount Hydrocarbons that the sensor can see by metering the inlet to that deviation where you mount the 02 sensor in the bung.

You can't just clear the code, then run it through emissions. The DME will have to see that there are no faults in the system, then run a majority of short tests in the system (one of which is catalytic converter efficiency.) Once these short tests pass its sets what is called readiness status's, then the car can be taken through emissions and pass. Fortunately you can monitor how many of the readiness values have passed and or are pending passing with the Porsche PIWIS tester. Every time you clear a fault in the DME the readiness values are all lost and the short test procedure starts all over again.

Hope this was of some help.

Cheers,
MU Staff

 

Just get a p.o.box in the county that doesn't require emissions and register car there...

 

There are a few ways you can go about this one and the cheapest is the Spark plug anti fouler route or get the ECU reflashed for the code or get a 02SIM. But if you are planning to have a few cars without the cats it might just be better to get register them in a county that does not require emissions also saves you some money.