If you don't want to have to do anything with emissions on a truck in CA, find a one ton that was never required to have emissions controls. Those got a pass until sometime in the 1980's because due to being sold as cab and chassis or rolling chassis it wasn't feasible to test every configuration. That loophole was how the Dodge Warlock and Lil' Red Express Truck existed. No emissions controls required so Dodge was able to build their engines like it was the 1960's.
My 1982 GMC 3500 doesn't have any emissions controls, it never had them because it was (AFAIK) sold as a cab and chassis onto which a flatbed was installed (moved from a Dodge and still has Dodge mudflaps).
So someone in California should be able to buy it and the State couldn't say boo about its lack of cats, the 700-R4 or the 350 V8 with TBI.
A while back the feds made it so vehicles over 25 years old no longer had to have their original emissions controls. So of course California hurried up to pass a law to ignore that federal rule.
It's insane how California either will not allow modifications to make a car run cleaner, or makes you jump through a few flaming hoops to do it. They focus on the process, the equipment under the hood, rather than the product, the exhaust out the tailpipe. How clean the exhaust is should be the only thing. How it's made should be no concern as long as it meets or exceeds the regulations of the year the vehicle was manufactured.
Idaho just got rid of emissions testing. Why? Because it had become pointless. The number of older vehicles has become low enough that their emissions are inconsequential, and newer cars rarely, if ever, get out of spec on tailpipe emissions.
Thus the testing program was seen as an unwarranted expense on the public. When was the last time California did away with a mandatory State program that had become pointless, other than grabbing money from the citizens?
