Supercharged 997 in Pasadena, CA

I was driving with my 03 996 Targa (and kids) yesterday at the Lake offramp and 210 freeway in Southern California. Next to us pulled up a red 997 carrera S. Above the Carrera S sign was a black "SUPERCHARGED" sticker . My 9 year old car buff noticed it first. In the window was a Sharkwerks sticker. Did EVO get a CARB certification? Anybody know the car?

Unless it happened in the last month....EVO doesn't have a CARB exemption....and as far as I know, they're not pursuing one. I guess they seem to do just fine with their sales to those states that dont' require the exemption. If I had one on my car in Calif....I'd be running it in stealth mode. I saw a CHP checkpoint set up today in Sacramento with the orange cones...... where they were pulling over vehicles for quickie roadside checks. A "supercharged" sign on a Porsche could result in a park-it-and-flatbed-it-home scenario.

Does this mean, you cannot have SC cars in California. Wow, what a bummer.....

No...Please don't think you can't have a supercharged car in California...quite the contrary....you can have supercharged cars that come with a factory supercharger....or with a supercharger that's had the CARB exemption and certification. For instance....If you have an MSD CDI unit....like when my Bosche unit died and I replaced it with the MSD box....it comes with the CARB stickers that you put in your door frame and on the inside engine cover. When the smog guys go to do the visual, they see the carb exemption number and enter it into the computer....and it comes back OK. If it's not there, and the smog guys are knowledgeable enough to know the Porsches don't come with a supercharger...they'll flunk it on the spot on the visual regardless of whether or not it passes the emissions part. The real kicker is that most of the cars that are running the EVO supercharger are running clean as a whistle....so they don't flunk because of emissions....they flunk simply on the visual part and the fact that EVO has never applied for the CARB exemption. The EVO superchager is actually a beautiful piece of engineering.

That is right in my backyard...I have never seen it. Hopefully he wasnt just "posing" with a sticker. I will look out for it!

As an aside, I don't understand the logic behind the visual test. If the car is running clean and passes the sniff, why should they give a hoot what's been done do it. After all, isn't the true intent of the emission laws to keep or reduce pollution into the environment emitted from vehicles?

+1, I dont understand the logic either, if its clean, quiet and passes like the rest of the stock cars... why flunk for visual of a shiny S/C. BTW... you can prob anodized the S/C black and noone will notice it... Does anyone know of the RUF kit is carb cert

I believe California's stance is that if by doing a visual of the vehicle and something doesn't look stock, then the vehicle has been modified and no longer meets CARB regulations. So then they check for the CARB stickers. California doesn't care if it burns cleaner at this moment, the visual is the first step to see if all of the smog pieces are in place and if anything is out of the norm. They know if the car is still stock then it has a great chance of passing smog, but modified they basically do not want to waste time proceeding with the test (it's a get them in and get them out process, the more cars the smog stations see the more money they get). If they see something not right they will have you go to the referee station for a further check by the state, which is in no rush other than to fail you if you got to them. But at least the smog station isn't dealing with your car anymore. Keep in mind that here in California they have 2 smog stations: Test Only Test and Repair Plus it is not just a pipe test and visual they do, they also test the gas cap.

Chuck, thanks for explaining. That is interesting and never knew... AZ doesn't care about our environment...... As far as I know, you can supercharge anything here....

Thanks for the great information. The car looked to be pretty new and the guy driving it had grey hair and didn't look like someone who would put a supercharged sticker over the carrera s but you never know. My eyes focused on the stickers in the rear window that said sharkwerks and I was looking for a rennlist sticker. I should have been looking at is plate to see if it was California registered. It may be that he was from Arizona or ??? Anyway, as soon as (or if they ever do) get CARB certified I will be the first in line to get one. The market here in Southern California must be huge for this. The price for the CARB cert must be even bigger so that is why they dont do it. Brad

you know a supercharged sticker alone is worth about 20hp...... 25hp if your car is clean and waxed.

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hah that must be Darren's car (really nice guy)... It sounds phenominal because he also went with the Europipe Exhaust System, cats etc... It's as powerful a 997S as we've done. Here's his project page with installation pix etc... http://www.sharkwerks.com/galleries/...S_supercharged