TEC III and tuning legality

[gol10dr1]

ok so i am getting closer to buying the tec3 for my ride. i have been told that the car will no longer be street legal with the tune and new mods with the tec3. can anyone elaborate on this. no one has given me any conrete details but i assume it has to do with the legality of the emmissions. if so, is there anything i can do to rig the car or muffle the car for emmissions testing. if there are other circumstances, please explain. thanks in advance.

[96INFMSM3]

ok so i am getting closer to buying the tec3 for my ride. i have been told that the car will no longer be street legal with the tune and new mods with the tec3. can anyone elaborate on this. no one has given me any conrete details but i assume it has to do with the legality of the emmissions. if so, is there anything i can do to rig the car or muffle the car for emmissions testing. if there are other circumstances, please explain. thanks in advance.
You can't use a stand alone ECU on a street legal car. You can buy the plug n play kit from one of the supporting vendors (forgot their name, someone should post the name in this thread). With the plug and play kit you can add the tec 3 without cutting up your factory wiring harness. When it comes time for emissions testing you can swap out the TEC III for your stock ecu. Since you didn't really elaborate further on your other mods I can't really elaborate on the legalities of those.

[///Dom]

You can buy the plug n play kit from one of the supporting vendors (forgot their name, someone should post the name in this thread).
Vic Sias...www.siastuning.com

[///3oris]

You'd still be "street legal".. is your car even OBD-I? This is only an issue for OBD-II cars since a lot of states are switching to OBD-II plug tests versus the old tail pipe tests.

Go for it... :buttrock

Boris

P.S. Technically it's still not legal, but I doubt anyone will go that far to check.

[gol10dr1]

vic will be tuning the car and i will have one of the m3 pnp systems but it will need to have custom wiring to make the pnp adaption fit, plus lots of other custom wiring. The car is OBD-1 (i am pretty sure, 1991 e34 535i) and when ever i have emmissions tests, the put it on the dyno, take it up to about 3k rpms a few times and have the sniffer in the back. as far as the mods go, i have the TCD stage 1 kit with a 60-1 turbo and it will soon be intercooled. maybe EMC can chime in since he recently did Mikea's car. hope this helps for anyone with further knowledge.

[///M3 Sedan]

May be able to make it work now and in the near future, but the laws are only getting tighter...

[Euro77]

As long as the system doesn't trigger a CE light, and you go to a "blind" technician your car should pass if it's within emmission levels.

For people who have stand alone units: Is the CE light functional (would it be set off ie if your o2 sensor is bad)?

[Mpowered02]

Well, technically, it may not be legal to alter the engine management of a vehicle...especially to an afermarket system. However, like has been already said, your car is OBD1 so you only need to do a sniffer test and not the OBD2 plug-n-scan. Given that your engine is tuned well with the TEC3 it should be able to pass the sniffer test (or at least be made to through some changes in the tuning). The main concern when going to a stand alone system like the TEC3 would be for a '96 and later car running OBD2 cuz then they would be required to plug into the OBD2 port. Obviously, the TEC3 doesn't have one so I'd assume that they'd fail it.

Gol10dr1...you're probably good for now, but who knows what kind of crazy legislation they might pass in the future...

[gol10dr1]

Gol10dr1...you're probably good for now, but who knows what kind of crazy legislation they might pass in the future...

i'll worry about the future down the road, as long as i am good now. in a few years the car could probably be considered historic!!! also, i saw your car i think last summer at columbia mall. def caught my eye then and now i see you on the board! i will be home in a few weeks for the summer. maybe we can meet up and scope out cars.

[Turbo Charg Dynam]

Andrew's car is not OBD1. It's a 1990. It only has a simple diagnostic port. I believe it is totally legal to change the engine management outside of Cali. It should easily pass any tail pipe test.
Todd