As for the smog guy, yea, I know a guy. He's also (what you guys just said basically) told me how now that they're doing that STAR Certified thing that it's much harder for them to overlook something. He'll at least tell me what's going on with my car before he even runs it on the smog machine if he thinks it'll pass or not.
Anyways, the performance related mods I'm thinking of - for now at least - are more "butt dyno" and audible mods. I know that things like a SRI / CAI, gears, and under drive pulleys can improve my MPGs a small amount as long as I don't go WOT all the time.
But yea, I'm just concerned on what mods can be done that won't impact the emissions of the car. I did do both CATs a while ago because one had failed so I decided to both because, well, why not? Since I'm still on the OEM exhaust tubing and the center cat, I haven't noticed any performance increase, however I have noticed that the exhaust has a very slight "grumble" to it; particularly at lower speeds / RPMs. I know that if I went with a full on cat-back system that she would sound a helluva lot better

.
Oh, and speaking of the 3rd CAT. Will removing the 3rd CAT affect smog performance at all? Like, will removing it cause me to fail smog? Or is it's purpose more for noise reduction? And the mods I'm thinking of specifically are SRI / CAI, PI intake (which I already have just need to install

), Magnaflow Hi-Flow CATs (already installed), and true dual exhaust.