FL exhaust laws?

[Dingoboy]

Already posted this on another forum... posting here for good measure. Any/all good info is appreciated...

Hey guys... I just brought home a MKIII 1JZ from Kentucky. And I got pulled over by Tampa PD for the tinted license plate cover and a "nonstandard exhaust." (HKS Dragger) No citation, just a verbal warning, and the cop was actually very cool about the stop. (Especially considering I had arrived home from KY New Year's Day & still had the KY plates on it, and had left my bill of sale & title at home by accident)

Didn't care for the tinted plate cover, and was going to remove it once I registered the car on Monday anyhow, so it's gone.

The Tampa cop's original words were "anything aftermarket is illegal" with regards to the exhaust. Now, we all know that's not true. When pressed for more info, he backed off from that statement, but had a hard time explaining his interpretation of the statute. I think he was trying to say that anything not to original OEM spec is illegal. And it may be. I don't know.

He did not inspect the exhaust, though, and had no way to know that the car has no resonator or cat.

I was already thinking of putting a hi-flo cat back on it, just to be in compliance. But if the 3" HKS Dragger is going to earn a citation on its own, I need to consider options for replacing that as well, since this car will eventually be my DD. (Maybe a different muffler with dual 2" tips instead of the big 3" blaster? Who knows?)

So what I am asking for is if anyone here knows the FL statute, and how most LEO & judges tend to interpret it, so that I can make an informed decision as to how I proceed from here.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[SupaMan]

From what we've gone through here in cape coma where the old people sleep, if its loud and not on an import then its fine.

We have a s/ced dakota R/T with a dumpped spintech pro shootout 3.5 inch exhaust right behind the cab and he can be half a mile away and punch it and i can clearly hear him. Its like being in a nascar.

They however can not see the huge tip as its dumpped and because its not on a punk driving import hes never gotten pulled over for it.

I would honestly if you wanted to keep a big exhaust just run it dumpped or consider an electric cutout, OR go find a nice dual tip muffler that you can tuck up into the stock area and maybe hide a little bit but will still flow the same. I know magnaflow makes a couple of very nice dual tip mufflers that look extremely good on MK3's and tuck up there very nicely.

 

[Dingoboy]

The exhaust on this car, while louder than stock, is not alarmingly loud at all. In fact, during the mile+ where the LEO was tailing me, I ended up at a stoplight, and a newer Mustang pulled up alongside. When the light turned green, his exhaust absolutely drowned mine out, no question about it.

I think in this case, it was more about the appearance than the noise. And I'm not a fan of the grapefruit launcher look, so I was already considering swapping out the muffler/tip for something with smaller dual tips that wouldn't be so eye-catching. Thanks for the Magnaflow suggestion.

Someone on the other forum suggested getting a TRD exhaust for the ability to claim it as OEM, even though that's not technically true. But I'd rather keep expenses down- no sense ditching the entire exhaust when it's functioning perfectly well.

 

[Poodles]

Hacking the HKS exhaust would be unwise IMHO. I'd sell it and buy another catback.

There isn't a TRD exhaust for our cars (at least not anymore, even if there was one).

 

[mhopemk3]

Go check out the Tamparacing site and see if anyone there has any more info. I haven't heard of any problems in Jax.. and my car is pretty loud.

 

[Dingoboy]

Hacking the HKS exhaust would be unwise IMHO.

Why unwise? Are you referring to the potential for resale of the unit, and blowing said resale? Or to some technical reason for not hacking it up?

 

[Poodles]

Blowing the resale, may sound like crap...

 

[zoppii]

I think part of it is also just data collection. New car in town with big exhaust so they find a reason to pull you over and put a name to the car and log it in the notebook. It's pretty easy to find a non standard item, non conformance on a car, or some other BS reason like improper lane change in order to pull someone over for what is really a spot check.