Performance Parts Wholesale With the Emissions Status on Every Fitment

The CARB Executive Order belongs to the application, not the part number. California's Air Resources Board exempts add-on and modified parts that pass its engineering evaluation from the state's anti-tampering laws. In CARB's own words, the Executive Order "allows the modification to be installed on specific emission controlled vehicles." So a header whose EO lists one engine carries no exemption for the bigger engine two rows down in the same fitment table. Many stores keep the EO number as a product attribute or print it on the install sheet. The cart never learns which vehicles it actually covers.

Smog Check sees what the catalog hid. Every EO part, CARB states, "has an assigned number that can be verified by Smog Check stations, BAR Referee stations, or by CARB." A shop in Fresno installs a part with no EO for that truck. The owner finds out at inspection, and the shop calls your counter. The return, the labor argument and the cooling account all come back to you.

Federal law reaches the seller, not only the installer. Under section 203(a)(3)(B) of the Clean Air Act, no person may "manufacture or sell, or offer to sell, or install" a part whose principal effect is to "bypass, defeat, or render inoperative" emission controls, where they know or should know it will be used that way, as EPA's fact sheet on aftermarket defeat devices sets out. If you sell race-only parts beside street parts, how your store presents, gates and records them is a compliance decision first.

Fitment data arrives clean and gets flattened on your own site. ACES is the auto care industry's standard for "the management and communication of product fitment data," maintained by the Auto Care Association. In the specialty channel, those files often go out through SEMA Data, which sends approved manufacturer data "to the thousands of resellers in our network." Your own website is often the last place that data lands intact. Engine, submodel and qualifier notes get cut down to year, make and model. Universal parts with no application sit in the same results as direct-fit kits.

Four price books sit behind one product page. A warehouse distributor buys at stocking cost on a volume program. A jobber buys a tier off list. An installer gets shop pricing. The enthusiast sees your minimum advertised price. The first three must never leak to the fourth, and the MAP policy you enforce against resellers loses its teeth the day your own site runs a coupon under it.

Drop ship and build-to-order combos break the normal order. Dealers sell from your catalog and want the box shipped to their customer on a blind packing slip. Enthusiasts buy headers, a matching exhaust and a tune as one combo, with the headers built to order and the rest on the shelf. An order flow that assumes one ship-to and one availability date turns every combo into a phone call.

Each problem above maps either to a published Uncap product capability or to work scoped and built during implementation. The page says which is which, because that line is where performance parts projects go over budget.

Fitment from ACES, kept down to the engine. Uncap Garage is Year-Make-Model fitment for Shopify, powered by ACES and PIES data. A buyer saves the vehicle once in Your Garage and the catalog narrows to the parts that fit it. Carrying your engine and qualifier detail through to search and the product page is configured during implementation, so the file your data team maintains is the fitment the buyer sees.

CARB EO status carried on each application and enforced at checkout. This is built during implementation, and for any brand with California exposure it is the most important part of the build. The EO number is stored against the vehicle applications it covers, not against the SKU. The product page shows the status for the vehicle the buyer selected. A cart with a California ship-to and a part that has no EO for that vehicle stops before the order is placed. Race-only lines can sit behind an acknowledgment or be restricted to accounts you approve. The EO number then prints on the order so the installer has it at inspection.

Tier pricing that stays inside each account. In Uncap Portal, each buyer sees their own assortment and pricing. A warehouse distributor, a jobber and an installer each sign in to their own price book, with reorder lists and order history a click away and net terms, invoices and payments in the same place. The public storefront shows your MAP price. Which brand lines hide price until login, and which promotions are blocked from MAP-protected SKUs, is configured during implementation.

Drop ship on the dealer's own account. Dealers order through a multi-user company account, with roles and permissions for whoever places orders at the shop. End-customer ship-to handling, blind packing slips and drop-ship fees by tier are configured during implementation.

Combos and build-to-order kits quoted as one order. Uncap Quotes runs the configure, price, quote (CPQ) workflow inside the Shopify admin. Negotiated account prices, tiers and volume breaks apply automatically, and exceptions route to the right approver. A shop quoting headers, exhaust and a tune for one truck gets one branded quote with a validity window and a full revision history, and the approved quote becomes a Shopify order in one click. Combo rules, such as which tune pairs with which header, are built during implementation on top of that workflow. So is split shipment of built-to-order pieces.

Exploded views for the small parts. Uncap Diagrams turns your exploded views into clickable hotspots mapped to live SKUs, and imports the schematics you already have with their callouts mapped. The installer who lost a collector gasket adds the exact part to the cart without a part number.

Infor VISUAL and the store telling the same story. Uncap Connect runs a real-time, two-way sync of inventory, orders, customers and pricing, embedded inside Shopify, and it syncs customer-specific pricing, credit terms and tax rules. Integrations are delivered through an owned Uncap Connect app or a managed iPaaS integration, depending on the ERP. On Infor VISUAL, customer records become Shopify company accounts. Contract pricing "stays in VISUAL, where it is negotiated and maintained, and resolves at checkout for the account that is logged in."

Where the custom work actually sits. Performance brands are often told that Shopify will push them into a bigger layer of apps and custom code. Some custom work is real, and it is the same everywhere: EO status by vehicle, MAP rules and drop-ship routing are custom on every platform, and a ready-made ERP connector does not change that. What differs is everything around them. Here, company accounts, ACES fitment and ERP sync come from Uncap products built for Shopify, and Connect runs embedded inside Shopify with no separate middleware platform to maintain. The custom layer is your trade logic, and VISUAL stays the system of record.

A performance exhaust manufacturer is already live. Uncap built Kooks Headers and Exhaust, a 60-year performance automotive manufacturer, onto one Shopify B2B and D2C store. The store is integrated with Kooks' Infor Visual ERP and a PDM Automotive PIM, with real-time inventory sync, fitment search by year, make, model, and engine, and secure B2B portals with custom pricing. The published results are a 22% conversion rate uplift and a 38% lower total cost of ownership from consolidating the tech stack. Georgia Kryssing, Sales and Marketing Director: "Before switching to Shopify, our old website held us back. We lacked analytics, marketing tools, and B2B capabilities, had no live inventory or search, and were stuck on a platform that was restrictive and hard to scale." The CARB EO layer described above is not part of the published Kooks case study. It is scoped per build.

Adjacent proof: E3 Spark Plugs, an ignition brand, runs a Year-Make-Model tool, a cross-reference application for competitor SKUs, and group pricing for dealers. Todd Arey, Founder and CEO: "Uncap Commerce is extremely efficient and does great work."

Engine-level ACES fitment. Year, make, model and engine from your ACES file, with universal parts kept apart from direct-fit kits. The mapping is configured during implementation.

CARB EO status per application. The EO number is stored against the vehicles it covers and shown for the vehicle the buyer selected. Built during implementation.

California ship-to gate. A part with no EO for the selected vehicle cannot check out to a California address. Built during implementation.

Race-only line controls. Competition parts sit behind an acknowledgment or are limited to approved accounts. Built during implementation.

WD, jobber and installer price books. Each account signs in to its own assortment and pricing through Uncap Portal, with customer-specific pricing synced from the ERP.

MAP-safe public pricing. Public pages show the advertised price, and promotions skip MAP-protected SKUs by brand line. Configured during implementation.

Dealer drop ship. Dealers ship to their customer's address from their own account, with blind slips configured during implementation.

Combo and kit quoting. Headers, exhaust and tune quoted together at the account's negotiated price, then converted to a Shopify order in one click. Combo rules built during implementation.

Infor VISUAL sync. Customers, pricing, inventory and orders kept in step with VISUAL through Uncap Connect, with an audit trail.

A header manufacturer is already live. Kooks runs Infor Visual, fitment by engine and wholesale portals with custom pricing on one Shopify store, with published conversion and cost results.

A clear line between product and build. Fitment, account pricing, quoting, diagrams and ERP sync are published product capabilities. CARB EO gating, MAP rules and drop-ship slips are built or configured during implementation, and you will see them in the scope and the price.

Credentials you can check. Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner, on Shopify since 2013, with 380+ unified storefronts launched on Shopify.

Scoped before anything is built. The Uncap Blueprint is a fixed-fee, four-week scoping engagement, credited toward implementation. Your EO list, ACES file and price tiers get mapped before a line of code.

This page sits under Auto Parts and Aftermarket, which covers the broad aftermarket: counter orders, core charges, jobber tiers and supersession. This page goes deeper on what that hub only names: emissions legality per application, race-only lines, MAP and drop ship for performance brands. For neighboring catalogs, see Powersports and Wheels and Tires. Uncap's field guide to aftermarket auto parts ecommerce covers the platform and fitment stack in more general terms. On the ERP side, see the Infor VISUAL integration that Kooks runs, the Epicor Kinetic integration, and the full list of ERP integrations.

Bring your CARB EO list and one ACES export for your best-selling header family. Between them they show which applications are legal where, and whether your store can say so today.

Book a strategy session with Uncap, or start with a Blueprint if what you need first is the EO, fitment and pricing architecture written down and costed.