Oh the ....
I feel your pain as here even lowering springs are a pita
​​​to make legal.. But I always appreciated the overthe pond freedomyou had.

ME should be reseting the reflash counter and make no "trace" on the ECU..
I understand about the maskings, but the checksums.. How can they know what checksum is original?? Every HW version of the ecu and every sw version will have adiferent one.. That is just for the RX-8 upwards of 100 of them.
Each time an ECU is written to the ChSum has to be correct or thr ECU will refuse the code (unless the ME or Versa can bypass checksum test) :)
Anyhow wishing you luck :)

Supposedly, CARB has been gathering data on cars from manufacturers and data from previously emissions tested vehicles to pull tables of information to cross reference.

For conversational sake, lets say over the 8 years we got the Rx8 in the United States ('04 - '11 model years), that we got 64 "original" checksums (could be less, could be more. Just using for example purposes)
That would average to 8 checksums per model year. Remember that California has its own emissions restrictions separate from the other 49 states. So 4 were California and 4 were the other 49 states.
Now factor that each year we had the automatic and manual transmission options, meaning that 6 becomes 2 checksums for auto and 2 checksums for manual.

So for my 2005 model, manual transmission, the CARB will be checking my PCM for a value in one of its checksum's to be one of only TWO numbers... considering that even the smallest change can create a different checksum, that doesn't leave really any room for variances from the factory PCM programming. Heck, when ME dumps the PCM at first setup before flashing that PCM dump right back into it, just the fact that it did stuff to be able to get access into the PCM could result in checksums that CARB is looking for being effected, even if a non-emissions related adjustment was made. CARB is going after tunes, and they are generalizing to be just about any thing that has been changed.

Any updates on this? Or did you get murdered at the CARB office?

Excuse the delay, I've had a lot of other things going on on my plate and I've also continued trying to make incremental progress on the car as I've had free time. I have some welding to do but the car is nearly complete and will be ready to tune soon.

Not a big deal, sometimes the car will sit for weeks until I get the time or motivation to wrench on it. I enjoy working on it....to a point, at this time though I have definitely spent far more time underneath it than driving it by a vast margin. I've purchased Brettus' manifold and will be going down the same path as you, and am fairly local, so was curious as to what progress was made, and whom you'd be using to fabricate piping.

What I am aiming to do is fabricate my own piping.. I purchased a TIG welder and I have been taking time here and there to teach myself TIG so i could do my own fab work. Keeps costs down and learn a trade while I am at it.

Great news re the CARB cert. !

That's ambitious, I hope it works out. Glad the emissions visit worked out, so glad I don't have to get my car checked here.

So in my case yes, the car DID pass the CARB emissions test. Car had a MAZDASPEED intake with the CARB sticker attached to it to meet requirements. Coils were stock, OEM cat converter and OEM header as well. So our cars will pass in California if you just flash the car back to the original ecu dump that mazdaedit creates and you have the required emissions components installed to the car as required by California law.

I was wondering how you did that FI, but then saw in the thread what you were doing. So every year changing back to stock and then back to FI again? :uhh:
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also meant to suggest this controller setup to you a while back; it’s specifically designed for NA cars converted to FI that still use the factory non-FI ecu

https://sirhclabs.com
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