I live in massachusetts, so besides the taxes there are poorly enforced bylaws. Evidently you are not allowed to have more than one unregistered car (ungaraged) on your property. Well, today, as I glance casually out my window to see what crummy N.E. weather we have, I notice a police SUV pull up to my drive (on rte. 126, a shizzhole stretch anyways) so my buds and I approach to see who's gettin cuffed. Noone, but he says he got a complaint from a neighbor (a slumlord who has a vandetta with us for sure) who the cop wouldn't name, but when i said who it probably was, he laughed and saids "yes") about unregistered cars being a problem. I have a 1 car garage, its our haven, and it houses my legit 1962 cadillac. In front, in my long drive, are a 1970 caddy with bags and my 74 dart (wanna buy it, its rot free!) both those are dead plates. So the cop comes, runs the plates, and takes the 70 and 74 plates cuz their dead. OK, now they really look unused. Well, this guy is a plumber with many olld trucks ion his lot (with a 3 story un-town-allowed-no-power-permitted-uninsured) garage and he is just a real asshole. So the cop took 4 plates which coulda hung on my wall (along with the other 27) and left me mad and with a cruiser posted to see that i don't mess with his shiz, which i obviously wouldn't, ya never mess with a man's cars. Just wonderin if anyone else had had this kind of problem. I'll try to post pics, but these cars are painted, all glass is there, no flats, no complaints until this neighborly war....which I WILL WIN!!!!! (i've been rollin like this for 20 years!!!)
If he had an outhouse , I know not likely, I would back it up a few paces. I know , guys like that belong at the bottom of a shithole. Rob
hey if you already own the cars insure em with grundy or haggerty, etc...pay for the plates and enjoy the a-holes expression when there is nothing he can do about it! i had to do it for my collection cuz the new horse farming yuppies didnt want to look at cars that were there 30 years before they even moved in! Massachusetts can be a bitch, all the zoning is town by town, so read your towns bylaws, study them and do whatever you can to be within the law!! In my town you can cover a car with a blue tarp and be in compliance!! I found out my neighbors really hate those blue tarps!!
SLICK WILLY is dead on man,the only way to beat the system is with there own rules.Spend a little cash and " RULE THIS DUDE OUT!
I shared your problem 'till about 4 years ago. I live about 45 minutes from you inside the rt.128 beltway. I had an old V8 Pinto, an Impala and an occasional other project lined up deep in my long second driveway, all dead plated on expired plates. The police would drive up several times during the year and pass along friendly reminders. I was given a choice to register them, garage them or get rid of them! My wife made the choice for me on one of them when she handed me an envelope containing $30 for my V8 Pinto she sold to the wrecking yard. The fuc%$#G bellhousing and Sun tach cost me 4 times that. I had at that time only a 1 car garage under the house that we kept her old Corvette in. We made a decision, went to the well to borrow money and built a big garage out back. Wish we did that 40 years earlier! Think of the old cars I could have saved.
Wow, you get to have 1 unregistered car on the property? I was recently informed that the allowable number was zero, and I had 2. One was a junker I was planning on getting rid of when I got a round tuit. The other was my daughter's graduation present, waiting for her to find a job in this wonderful economy... Told Mr Code Enforcement Officer that it would be a cold day in Hades...hey, you write an $1100 ticket to the ones within 200 feet of where we are standing? {No}, ever hear of the equal protections clause? Afte much hemming and hawwing, he decided to inform me that a car cover would bring things into compliance. My final question to him was, why dont you simply write that bit of info on your door hanger ticket tag? Of course, we all know the answer to that, they prefer to tell you about the parts of the law that make you junk the cars, not cover them...
thats 1 why mass sucks .... so i bought a pop up garage ... case closed. oh another detail, you cant park your car behind your house, on the dirt or a seperate slab of cement .. you have to be on pavement or cement all the way to the location of the car.
Unless you have family committments that hold you there why don't you move to someplace like Texas where you can pretty much do what you want. The weather is better year round, prices are better and life is good.
It's $35 to register a car with QQ plates in NJ, and you're inspection exempt. It's also dirt cheap to insure cars with collectors policies. Well worth the $200 a year to keep everything legit. Then you can park the cars in front of the slumlord's house and there isn't a damn thing he can do about it.
Good call. I tried to get 57JOE on my QQs, and someone already had it! Bummer! Seriously though, keeping things legit is the best way. If you try to haggle with the police and slip one by them, they're not going to give you the benefit of the doubt down the line. Another thing you should be aware of are not just unregistered vehicle laws, but inoperable vehicle laws. My town is in some kind of blue collar denial and doesn't allow any inoperable vehicles regardless of registration or insurance status. I used to have to keep calling the city inspector because I'd have my old chevy truck parked down my driveway that wouldn't move for a month because I was away at school. He'd assume it was because it wasn't running and give me a ticket. It actually had a brand new 355/TH350 in it. I'd have my mom drive it every once in a while just to move it. Just some stuff to be mindful of
that's not true. when I lived in Lockhart, TX I had a little 1973 Civic in the driveway, with a tarp over it, and I still got a red sticker on it (means remove it or you'll pay big $$). the idiots put the sticker ON THE F-IN TARP!!! so no do-what-you-want at all.
I think Marlboro Mass has a similar bylaw. I'd be in trouble if I lived there, my yard is grass or dirt - no paving! But to the OP, read your town bylaws - often if it is out of public view (behind the house or a fence) it's OK. ...WADDAYA MEAN IT'S INOPERABLE?......
my neighbors love to come see what i have brought in lately,the cops stop by to talk hotrods....people actually stop and take pictures of my lovely yard art...gotta love oklahoma.
PA has it,,though I think its mostly enforced in bigger towns and also more as a deterrent to keep folks from having there yard turn into a junkyard.. Never heard of teh inside a building one,,thats kinda none of there business
i'll do you a favor and take that caddy off your hands, no charge! Thats why I live in nh, the cops dont waste there time on stupid crap like that around here.
Friend of mine had a similar issue. 3 weeks ago scored on 4 mid 50's chevy trucks all in decent shape and was a great deal. Neighbor calls the county, inspector comes out (he's a car guy) and explains that you can't have more than two ungregistered vehicles outside but that parts of vehicles aren't in the code. So, he takes the front clips and beds off all the trucks and lines them all up. Now it looks like twice the stuff and he is in compliance with the county. Complaining neighbor is now pissed. People should mind there own business.
In our town, they had a big article in the paper a few years ago about a guy who had a REAL sh!thole going in his back yard with dead appliances, scrap metal, engines, POS cars that didn't run, etc. and Codes Compliance announced a big "crackdown" on "inoperable" vehicles as a result. All of my car buddies who raced and restored cars and trucks burned up the phone lines to the city's Codes Compliance office SO much that by the time that I got to call, the lady was practically begging us to stop calling! They WERE pretty cool about it though, and said that they knew that people liked restoring and racing old cars, so they pretty much agreed to leave everyone alone as long as #1) no one complained (their main criteria, as far as they were concerned) and #2) that the vehicle was "screened from public view". She said that the instant that you bring something home to cover it completely with a tarp, car cover, or to park it behind some privacy fence and we'd be ok. She even added that if they noticed an inoperative vehicle themselves that they'd probably just pass on by, but the instant that someone complained, then they'd be forced to act. On my parts cars, I always tried to keep the tires pumped up and the weed whacker close by. My neighbors appreciated my efforts and never complained at all. It's when you get one dickhead who thinks that he's the mayor of your little community...
I would move dude.The city used to be on me all the time.Even stuff I had hidden that could only be seen from one angle in my back yard.I moved out in the countryside and have had no trouble since.But you still need to mess with your complainer though.
The Jalopy Journal
