<VV> Va inspections a good deal and old car house bill and #of corvairs

[Tony Underwood]

At 08:48 AM 1/12/2007, Vairdad at aol.com wrote:
>Where can you get a  60 point inspection of you car or truck for $15.  I
>think this is the best deal you will  ever get from Va.
>  Now to the old car house bill. This new law was brought on by the  elite
>crowd with big heated garages and their big expensive cars who  think anybody
>driving a less than perfect car is scum. One part of the law 
>they  wanted was car
>had to be in a garage. They thought they could get into  politics and
>influence the law makers to agree with them. I hope the law 
>passes,  I do not mind
>spending the extra $25 a year.
>




...what happens when you present a 47 year old Corvair to an 
inspection station staffed by an ignorant inspector who flunks your 
car for not having seat belts?    I went through some debate once 
with an inspector over this simple point which he *refused* to 
acknowledge.    Dimwit.   I ended up going elsewhere to get a 
sticker; this before the car was registered as a vintage/antique and 
was exempt from the VA safety inspection.

I don't worry about safety issues on my stuff.    If there's 
something wrong with it, I fix it.   And I DO check.    Ugly my daily 
driver may be, but it's roadworthy, runs well, and I'd take it 
anywhere.    I don't need an inspector to look at it and determine 
whether it's "safe" or not.    As far as the daily driver is 
concerned, I'm considering welding in some floor reinforcements so I 
can install seat belts in the car, come spring.   ...not to "comply 
with the law" but because I feel better with a seat belt.

The current law suits me just fine, no need to change it 
IMHO.     There's also no reason to mandate that I take the car to be 
inspected by someone else who very likely knows MUCH less about the 
car than I do, yet by virtue of some nimrod in Richmond I'm expected 
to be subject to HIS opinion on the status of the relative safety of 
my car.


My ratty-ass '60 has almost new tires.  The brakes were done last 
spring.   I also replaced the last unreplaced steel brake line last 
fall.    Also last fall I replaced the windshield wiper linkage under 
the dash, which had developed an issue with wobbling and sticking on 
occasion.   Defrost got fixed last month, had begun to act up (dirty 
switch and very stiff cable).    Replaced a tail light bulb a couple 
months ago, spotted it as I did a walk-around check which I do 
regularly just to make sure all lights are OK.   I also just 
purchased halogen replacement headlights and new (brighter) backup 
light bulbs for the car, will likely get them installed this 
weekend.    Still need to get the speedo fixed (pointer fell off last 
month) which means I turn up another '60 speedo and send it to Lew to 
calibrate (since I no longer have access to the equipment required to 
do it) as I wanna continue to keep track of mileage and fuel used so 
the existing odometer stays in the car, gets swapped into the fresh 
speedo when the time comes.   It's due for another oil change soon, 
maybe next month I think, need to check the car's logbook.

Yes, the ugly '60 daily driver has a logbook.    It's a somewhat 
battered notepad but it contains records on the car including 
mileage, the fuel it's used, oil changes, repairs, etc.   The current 
logbook is only about 8 months old... the previous books are stuck 
away somewhere.    But I have records on the car dating back for 
almost two decades, which was when I started keeping track on the 
car's running time.

Do I need to have somebody inspect this car to make sure it's 
"safe"?    I don't think so.    I don't believe that most people who 
would drive a Corvair regularly would need  a safety inspection 
either because they're gonna stay on top of things concerning 
anything to do with the car.    This would be a given, expected from 
someone who would think enough of a 40+ year old car to keep it 
roadworthy.    Those 25 year old rusty Caprices and battered Sentras 
and Celicas etc displaying dents and different color doors delivering 
pizza while sporting vintage tags do NOT apply here.



Mr Marshall-III's veiled threats as reads his proposal also did 
NOTHING for me.    Any failure to "comply" could result in the 
revocation of the "privilege" of registering the car as an antique 
for FIVE years?


Frankly, I'm getting pretty damned SICK of the ongoing 
number/increases of yet more and more "threat" based regulations 
heaped on top of the mesmerizing number of regulations already in 
place.    Seems kinda draconian to me...   What ever happened to the 
function of government being to serve the public, rather than rule 
them?   It's as if many of these so-called legislators have nothing 
to do so they feel they must write up some proposal in order to show 
their constituency that they're "working".

When their own personal viewpoints become part of the agenda instead 
of considering the views of those they are supposed to serve, it gets 
tacky and juvenile and shallow.


This is NOT the first time stuff like this has come up in 
Richmond.   Some of the proposals that have been cooked up were 
insulting in not only content, but in the way that they were 
"sneaked" into the voting process by being attached to other bills as 
"riders" and thus never had the first word of their content ever 
debated on the floor.   Seems like every session there's something 
like this that's brought up.   It's an ongoing gun battle trying to 
stay ahead of the stuff.    Instead of jerking vintage car hobbyists 
around, they should be working on ways to cut spending so they won't 
have to be worrying about raising taxes.



tony..