It's best to admire classic cars from afar???

I got the "cookie-cutter" response.

 

Newspapers are just birdcage liners, and fish wrappers.

 

Now some of the HAMB guys can honestly say their words have been printed in a main stream publication just like the tool that wrote the article.

 

Amen. The state safety inspection systems are far from perfect but I surimise that they do more good than harm at the end of the day. For the car guy who knows his **** its a pain in the *** to have another "pro" check out your car but for JohnQ public it can be a great thing....especially when you see how fast components wear out and get damaged. In the salt belt, where pot holes devour whole cars, parts can wear out in a season or two of driving.

Old cars/cl***ic cars? Think about this one....how many bubblegum and JB welded up tierods and draglinks (or my favorite...tierod ends held on by three threads or less) have we seen here on the HAMB? How many have you seen in your own travels over the years? Think about how many are out there that you havn't seen and are out on the roads today? Hopefully not many....but you know the examples you've seen were, at some point in time, out on the road. I would hope that in an "inspecting" state the majority of those dangerous situations would be caught before the car was sent back out on the road......whereas in the "non-inspecting" state some of the folks catching these dangerous problems are sometimes in the emergency room after the fact.

I'll gladly pony-up the 20 bucks a year knowing that the "non-car" folks that don't know any better at least have a fighting chance to have unsafe situations discovered and repaired before its too late.

-Bigchief.

 

I see your point and the dangerous unmaintained cars do need to be off the road, but the goverment will find a way to use these inspections to put your rod off the street too. technicaly it's illegal to modify anything whatsoever on a car,according to federal law,but no one really cares or enfoces it. if there were forced inspections they would use these laws to shut down the hobby.

 

Damn, wish I'd used spell check now...............

 

We've had inspections in here in NYS for many decades......as far as I can tell there is no shortage of hotrods here and the hobby thrives quite well. Newer car or Old. And there havn't been any G-men here to pull the plates off my old cars either.

Illegal to modify anything whatsoever? I seriously doubt that. I'd like to see the CFR that states that specifically. I'm sure there are laws regarding emissions and safety equipment and, no doubt, the state and feds probably would like OEM or CARB certified replacement emissions parts on the car if its newer than '68 and if the car is unsafe you'll need to get it fixed - other than that I seriously doubt there are G-men out there looking to take your chopped, channeled '32 coupe away from you.

Got examples of the federal code that states that its illegal to modify anything whatsoever on your car?

-Bigchief.

 

i've had a couple of days to fume on this, and it hit me... he's a mainstreamer. he's a civilian. and if he keeps "normal" people from driving too close to me, all the better.
he got what he was looking for, he got a controversy started. **** him. maybe now he'll move on to write a movie script like "Brokeback Mountain" and leave cars and car people alone.

 

Articles like that are why newspapers are not making as much money as they did. People don't want to read that kind of tripe.

 

I thought he was one of those cowboys in that movie

 

just went through a texas state inspection on my "old" 87 chevy tonight. Outside of a blown taillight bulb it was fine. Shew I'm glad I'm safe now. That article had me really scared I was driving junk.

 

Problem is, I don't know that I've ever read about or heard of a one-car accident caused by mechanical failure. Seriously, I'm not being glib here...I would think a one-car accident that could be traced to a suspension part that wore out to the point of failure, or brakes being so worn out that they failed and caused the accident would be newsworthy. And I've never seen anyone interviewed or talked with anyone that said "I was driving down the highway, and all of the sudden the car suddenly jerked real hard to the left, I crossed the median and slammed head-on into that bus carrying the nuns and orphans." Or some such thing.
Be honest...has anyone on here heard of mechanical failure leading to an accident? I'm sure it's happened, but if it has, how many do you suppose it is compared to Ford Explorers? Or cop-car Crown Vics being rear-ended and having the gas tanks rupture on the strap bolt? Etc. etc. etc.

Much ado about nothing, and one more instance for the government to reach into our pockets for our own "protection."
-Brad

 

What a **** pirate

 

That sums up my position...
Some states still do not currently have motor vehicle inspection...Are the motorists dying off at unprecedented rates, flying off of highways, with their improperly installed tie rod ends waving in the breeze? It would seem not.

Besides...laws don't stop things from happening, they just turn into great big revenue machines.
Its just a system to arrange payment for the crime.

But then...I have a bone against "Big" government.
We don't need inspection. Those who are concerned about their car, and its safety, will maintain it, law or not....Those who are not...well, they probably don't really care about having an inspection sticker, either.

 

We have one right here on the HAMB. Denise's (HRLC) tierod on her CrownVic let go at highway speed in Ohio while on her way to Virginia this past year. Luckily she's a sharp driver and kept the car in a safe direction and got off to the side of the road without hitting anything. The story is do***ented right here. The problem? Worn components. The 'mechanic' checking out the car during oil changes apparently was asleep at the wheel. She was lucky, had there been more cars around her or if road conditions were different the situation may have been quite different.

Mechanical failures can and do happen. NHTSA has plenty of data on component related failures. Brakes, balljoints, frames rotting out, springs snapping....the site reads like an automotive horror story. Its quite interesting. Thats how recalls occur - usually triggered by the number injuries due to accidents caused by parts related failures.

You'll hear about accidents all of the time in the news and paper but its rare that the information from accident reconstruction teams and lab ****yses is published after the fact. JohnQ public loves to buy papers with huge accident scene pictures on the front but the fine print technical doodaa sent out weeks or months after the fact usually doesn't make it to the last page under the comics unless the accident was high profile. And if there is litigation involved then nobody will hear anything until the court battle is over years later.....so its no suprise that we don't hear more about these kinds of incidents.

-Bigchief.

 

Its not just the sticker....here in the So******t Republic of New York if the car doesn't p*** inspection the DMV is notified (by the car itself if its new enough) on the spot. Nice, eh?

 

Damn! I've heard about them there new-fangled narc cars...
Around here, honestly, An inspection sticker is kind of optional...

 

"Wow. Your re****al makes you even more of an uninformed ***-clown.

Posted By: David Russell | Sep 24, 2008 9:51:53 AM​

"

I found this on the re****al page. David Russell is now officially my favorite person, I hope he is a HAMBer.
CHAZ

 

That is by far one of the worst articles I have ever seen.
California has no regular inspection for any cars that I know of, other than smog checks.
Just completely ridiculous.
But I guess that's fine, I'd rather have those kind of idiots stay as far away from my Plymouth as possible!

 

Not commenting on the bad article at all, but I am for yearly safety checks on any car any year on the road.

I am also intensely for non governmental interference in our lives.
BUT
I have been inspecting cl***ic cars in my shop for about 18 years now. I do the typical Virginia State Inspection that I learned working in shops as a kid.

I hardly have a cl***ic car come into my shop that does not have a serious safety issue. You would not believe the things we see, and the stories we hear.

*** I SEE THESE THINGS ON NEWER CARS, 10 YEAR OLD CARS, AND CL***ICS.
These are $2500 cars to $250,000 cars. Factory built, home built, and shop built.
I am just telling you the facts that I have seen in thousands of cars I have personally inspected.
I don't mean this in any negative way at all, but I bet many of the cars owned by guys on this site, as well as other cl***ic cars wouldn't p*** a basic safety inspection.

**This is not a bash at all, but seriously check your car out. It is your responsibility as a decent human being if you drive on public roads.

For me, it all comes down to what I have seen with my own two eyes over the years, with the realization through maturity that my feeling of self importance is not more important than that families sharing the public road with me. You can always build your own road with different rules, that is called a racetrack, and they even have safety checks there. You should have the right to endanger yourself, but not other people on the public road or race track.

Wil
www.sakowskimotors.com

p.s. The beat up death traps (usually 80's cars) you see driving around LA at 80mph in and out of traffic are ridiculous. The driver's should be thrown in jail for their reckless endangerment of other people.


.

 

So what exactly is the real point of this clowns article? At first it was safety concerns....BUT then it became a matter of "fairness"? WTF is so unfair again? Could it be that others as well as himself have to PAY for an inspection? hmmmm....he pointed that out himself that if our cars were in such great shape it shouldnt be a problem for us to shell out a few bucks for an inspection. Revenue...period. Its not good enough that most all states require that you have a regulary registered vehicle as well if you are running antique tags on your others? Revenue....period.

 

Growing up in 60's & 70's in Colorado , we had yearly inspections...Then sometime in the mid 70's they were done away with. I remember the BIG uproar over NOT being inspected.
Frankly, I'm all for it.
But what MR. Muskrat didn't write about was the crumbling conditions of our 'Public Roads & Highways and the accelerated damage they cause to ALL vehicles yearly .
my $ .03

 

funny, that's why i call our local paper the "Mostly Spurious" (Post and Courier, Charleston SC); it is a liberal left piece of recycled toilet paper and not even fit for wrapping fish. remember the "Bat Phone" in Bruce Wayne's mansion? they got one themselves, hooked straight to lal-la land.
need a story about the evils of people having self-determination? NO PROBLEM! it's coming over the fax right now. sign your own name to it.

there's a local area called Chicora-Cherokee (a worse insult to the Cherokee i could not imagine) where every 2-3 months they do a "sweep" and clear out empty rental properties, inop cars, uncut gr***, etc.... the TV news even covers it as a major event in crime-fighting.
this gives the greater population of Chucktown a warm and fuzzy about the "urban blight" being dealt with.

 

This is a quote form the article

"Still, it takes just one mechanical failure in one vehicle at the wrong place and time to hurt others, or at the least inconvenience them by stalling traffic."

He is one of those people living in some other reality than my own.

I put just as many mile in as the next guy, BUT!!! I never see an antique car broken down on the side of the road, OR stalled in traffic, it's always some newer plastic piece of ****.

Am I right?

Anyone else going to work in the am only to be held up by someone in an antique car that stalled in the middle of the road, or was it an early 90's cavalier?

Yeah, thats what I thought!

Cheers and beers
Hodge