northern VA has emissions, around here (blacksburg) we don't, we do have really irritating "safety inspections" which are pretty much worthless. for what its worth, I have no 3rd cat, and techincally you can't do that. its emmissions okay because its really just a muffler, but since its a cat element, its supposed to be there. the nice advantage we have is that all SLOs only have 2 cats, and the probably see 500 of them for every SHO, and with a car that common, who is going to look up in a book to see what it has, I think most places would count two and leave it at that. you might get unlucky, but I doubt it. when I took my 3rd cat off though, I sepecifically left it so I could put it back on easily if I ever needed to. still have the resonator, but I want to get that taken out too, the note is awesome as is, but that would make it even better. I also have stock tips on flowmaster 40s, 2 1/4 offset/offset.