[kipps]

Yeah, I'm REALLY glad I don't live in California.

Another possible but probably ill-advised route -- build the modern engine to look as "stock" as possible. There's cast manifolds designed to put a carburetor on top of a LS engine. I've seen folks bolting a drive-by-wire throttle body and MAF sensor on top of those manifolds, and covering the whole thing with a round air cleaner. I also saw one build that clustered all eight ignition coils into a plausible "distributor", that at first glance, looked like the real deal. He had it mounted in the back of the valley pan, just like the old smallblocks. There's adapters to mount smallblock valve covers onto the LS heads. If really carefully done, the engine would be virtually indistinguishable from a stock small block. Add a dash of grease and grime, and the inspectors are likely to just whiff the exhaust, and send it on.

Again, I don't advise this, because I don't know California at all. But I would love to see the result. I've dreamed of an LSx engine that fools 90% of the car buffs into thinking that it's stock.