Hey everyone. I have a few questions and I can never get a straight answer so i thought I'd come here and ask all you fine folks. I live in Ontario Canada and i own a 1980 Camaro Z/28. I had a custom motor put into it and since I was told it was emissions exempt because the car was over 20 years old I did not put any emmissions controls on it. Now I have it built and i got pulled over last spring and was fined for not having the proper emmisions equipment on it. I guess what I am curious about is what is right and wrong? Does emmisions exempt mean exempt from emissions standards? or do i still have to have the equipment on there even thought according to the law it is "emmissions exempt"? According to what I've been told i can never put a supercharger on the car as the intake would have no place for an EGR Valve. I'm looking for input and answer from both sides of the border. Cause I see in the magazines all these wicked Hot Rods in the States that are wildly done up and supercharged and what not and you have special insurance for them and everything. And it's legal to drive them on the street. But up here I'm sure to get pulled over and fined again as soon as my car comes out of storage. I'm sorry if this seems like a bit of a ramble... but sometimes it's hard to get your thoughts out straight. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys,

Nick DeShane  

You’re between a rock and a hard place. Ontario has some of the strictest emissions regulation on the planet. Canada is a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty. At a Federal and Provincial level it is pursuing compliance with extreme vigor. Canada, for example, has a Car Scrapping program offering small incentives to take pre 1988 vehicles off the road and scrap them out.

Under the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) it is illegal anywhere in Canada to remove, modify, or render inoperative any emission device originally equipped to the car. While this is also a requirement common to the United States, it is not enforced in areas not requiring emissions testing and few of those go beyond the most terse inspection. However, in Canada, for the most part, outside the extreme northern portions of the Provinces it is enforced with gusto. Ontario is a little weirder in this program in that those areas that enforce regulations also reserve the right to inspect visiting vehicles for conformance and have the legal authority to require conformance even if you don’t live in an area that does inspect. The rule here goes back to it’s a violation of Federal Law to mess with emissions equipment.

As far as the 19 year rule goes, what it states is that when a vehicle becomes older than 19 years, it no longer is subject to emissions testing as a requirement to license the vehicle. But, and it’s a BIG BUT, although testing is no longer required, it is illegal to remove, modify, or otherwise render ineffective the original emissions equipment. So your old Z-28 is not emissions equipment exempt; it’s just testing exempt. But you're still restriced by Canadian Federal Law to have what equipment came on the car to be there and to be functional.

The hot rods you see in American magazines run the gamut from legal to illegal. The 20 year rule in the states is the same as Canada; it’s just not vigorously enforced not even in California  but that's rapidly changing. California is on the leading edge of emissions and hot rodding, therefore, the state working with SEMA devised a set of rules that allow substantial modifications that are legal with qualifications. The legality is established thru several means the most significant two are the allowance of speed equipment manufacturers to qualify equipment and modifications that do not degrade emissions as qualified by the original manufacturer of the vehicle. Second, California provides, at taxpayer expense, a set of qualified automotive engineers called “Referees” who pass technical judgment on quality and design conformance of modifications with "qualified" equipment to the intent of law. "Qualified" parts and equipment are those that have been thru the California and US Federal emissions testing program and are shown not to degrade emissions. These parts receive a CARB (California Air Resources Board) exemption number and the other 49 states receive a DOT approval. Back in Californai, they then provide a plate affixed to the vehicle stating that the State agrees that the design, parts and configuration of the modifications meet the intent of the law. However, the vehicle must still pass a tail pipe emissions test on the chassis dynamometer. So both conditions have to be met prior to licensing. Not all states do this, you will note an absence of hot rods with Pennsylvania plates. This state has stringent engineering requirements that all but eliminate the home enthusiast from changing what came from the factory. This is much more common in the north eastern states. But south of the Mason Dixon line it’s pretty much a free–for-all. But population centers such as Atlanta and Houston are having to require conformance thru testing since their burgeoning populations are rendering the air un-suitable to OSHA Standards. The Midwest is spotty by location as is much of the interior south and northwest. Coastal California, Oregon and Washington have very stringent rules. These states, the American northeast and Canada basically enforce California regulation, but don’t provide a means of qualifying Hot Rod modifications as is done in California.

Bogie