honda stock air cleaner housing on a weber 32/36

[Taylor Smith]

has anybody modified the stock air cleaner to fit onto a weber in california they dont let you change anything on the engine for smog purposes... pretty lame and i have to take my 85 hatch to a star test smog place on 4/21 star test means i cant just bribe the guy extra to pass it ive been trying to tune it for a while now and it just refuses to act right so i wanna get the weber and dress it up like it belongs on there... has anybody done this?

[Dr_Snooz]

If it were me, I wouldn't try to get creative with a star test. You want to get creative before it comes to that. I have put aftermarket carbs on cars and gotten them through the regular tests okay. I've never had a star test, so I don't know what to expect. My guess, however, is that they are a more intrusive form of the regular test. The normal test involves two parts. The first is the visual check, just to make sure you still have all the smog stuff that came from the factory. A Weber carb should cause you to fail this part of the test. Most shops don't check that thoroughly, so you can get most stuff through if you disguise it. If the star folks aren't on the ball, you may get the Weber past them. The second part of the test is the tailpipe sniffer and dyno test. Unless you know what you are doing when you tune that Weber, you stand a very good chance of failing that portion miserably. I'm not sure what would happen if you went gross polluter on a star test, but I bet it wouldn't be fun.

You might be better served by doing some serious study on carb tuning before buying a Weber. Get the factory carb working right and you'll stand a better chance of getting the Weber to blow clean.