Everyone is scared of this kind of thing. What are the classic car laws in your state? Do you need emissions etc?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/research/nevada-looking-to-close-classic-car-loophole/ar-BB1dv6Mi?li=BBnbfcL

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/rese...6Mi?li=BBnbfcL

 

Why does it always seem that when politicians talk the words “loopholes” and “taxes” usually come up in the same sentence ?

 

Every automotive forum has their panties in a bunch because of this. Sorry, but this is unfortunately due to people who take advantage of the system. We have a boatload of people here in VA who use antique registration to get around having to have their rusty POS fail inspection every year, then continue to use the car as a daily driver instead of in accordance with the restrictions that go along with an antique registration. People are self-centered jerks, pure and simple. This is why we can't have anything nice.

Here's something to think about. In this photo, the red F150, red Corolla, and white Monte Carlo all qualify for antique plates today with a 20 year cutoff.




And since the next reaction will be "enforce the laws we have", that's a lot easier said than done. They try do that here in VA. The problem is proving it. VA law allows you to drive the car to and from a repair station, on club functions, and a limited amount of occasional joy riding. It's rare that the police will figure out that this same car with the antique plates is being used daily to drive to and from work unless that one officer stakes out the person's garage. And unfortunately that enforcement has led to people being cited for using their antique registration truck for load carrying when they have a cooler and lawn chairs in the back on the way to a car show.

 

What's laughable is that people think "antique" or "classic" cars cause large amounts of pollution.

 

Here in Arizona the Dept of Environmental Quality had to conduct a multi year study before the sate was allowed to remove classic vehicles (anything built after 1966) from mandatory emissions testing. FINALLY the state was able to show the emissions from these vehicles would not have any negative impact the air quality due to their limited use.

 

Being new to this I was astounded a tax loving state like PA was so easy. $81 registration, permanent! No yearly inspection and no emissions.
Antique is defined as over 25, Classic as over 15.
Would rather see a compromise if needed. Maybe make antique 50 years and classic over 25.

 

In Oklahoma there is no real advantage to Classic/Antique registration as there is no state inspection here. The cost difference vs regular plates is negligible, however there are limitations in vehicle usage. I have not been here long enough to see if there is any real enforcement of the usage statute. In Texas Antique plates are cheap and circumvents state inspection requirements but limits your driving. Those limitations are hardly enforced.

 

People will always find a way to scam so they can justify in their minds what they think is right. Joe hit it right on the head - people are self centered jerks. I was reading on a travel forum before about residents who fly back into New York are required to have a negative COVID test before returning home. So the scammers there figured out to avoid having the required test they will just fly into Newark Airport which apparently is just outside New York City and drive back into New York. As stated above, the selfish and self centered ruin it for everyone. My rant for the day.

 

I don't have any issues with a state inspection, I used to get that on the Cutlass annually when I lived in Texas. It was nice to have someone aim the headlights, check the brakes, and such.

What peeved me was Arizona mandating IM240 emissions testing for every vehicle built after 1966. I mean, seriously, having to get a 1967 vehicle emission tested?!?! It took a monumental effort to get that changed as ADEQ had to prove to the EPA that the overall emissions would not increase if some of the older cars were exempted. I saw the data they collected showing emissions from EVERYTHING including lawn mowers, leaf blowers, etc. and classic, collector vehicles had almost zero impact on the overall air quality. Finally in 2007 the Arizona legislature convinced the EPA to allow collector cars that are at least 15 years old to receive emission testing exemptions. "Collector car" means it has to carry a classic car insurance policy so that daily drivers didn't qualify.

 

The article is vague at every sentence and appears to be written to inflame readers or sell papers rather than inform anyone. Politian's bend with the wind so this is probably just a test to see which way the wind is blowing today. Remember we just had a election, some need to see if the wind is blowing from the left or the right. It's early if something happens with this and if it does it will look nothing like what his article portrays. Give it time....Tedd

 

There was an attempt to institute "smog" testing in Texas during early/mid nineties. Was living in El Paso at the time, and the fact that Cuidad Juarez's smog respected no boundaries made it useless. May have been well intentioned, but reality got in the way.

 

I personally would like to see some sort of inspection done here in Indians, simply to get some of the seriously neglected junk off the road. It seems not a day goes by that I don’t hear at least one car or truck with a serious misfire. If I can hear the dead cylinder sitting in my car, there is no way in hell the driver isn’t aware something is wrong. Too many people think automotive maintenance is opening the fuel door.

What I don’t want is all the stupid bullshit that always seems to go with vehicle inspection. Look the car over, do all the lights, wipers, and tires look good? Is the car so rusty that doors might fall off, or the seats fall thru the floor? Does the car appear to be reasonably well maintained, and run decent? If so, good enough.

People bitch about the emissions crap, and how old cars are “gross polluters”. Properly tuned and maintained, it’s surprising how clean old iron can be. Obviously, a old car won’t be as clean as something newer (due to catalytic converters, vapor recovery, etc) but actual tailpipe emissions can be pretty clean.

People also argue that EFI, electronic ignition, is automatically cleaner. Not entirely true. Assuming the ignition timing curve is correct, there is zero difference in emissions between ignition points, HEI, or any other electronic ignition. The benefit is less maintenance. People didn’t care if the timing was off, or the dwell was off, or the points were worn. As long as the car ran, they were perfectly content. The new ignition simply eliminated the need for maintenance.

Same thing with EFI, a properly tuned carb can provide fairly efficient fuel delivery. People didn’t care if the choke pull off was bad, or carb is gummed up, as long as it got them where they needed to go, who cares if it’s less than ideal?

Tire monitoring systems. Gotta have that fancy federally mandated expensive add-on to tell the driver they are driving on basically flat tires!! Occasionally checking the tire pressure is too much of a inconvenience.

If people would spend a tiny fraction of the time on their cars as they do on their phones, social media, or any other mind numbing trivial task, a lot of the crap we have to deal wouldn’t be needed.

 

Here in California vehicles made in 1975 and older are exempt from emission tests and any inspection.

 

Which is why when I lived there in the 1980s, it was not uncommon to see a POS on the side of the road just past the railroad crossing on Imperial in El Segundo with one of the front tires splayed out because a badly worn ball joint had finally popped loose. Sorry, but inspections of other people's crap protect ME.

 

Most of the larger populated counties in Texas require smog testing.

 

I was living in the Houston area at that time. There was some in-depth reporting about the Golden Triangle area being mandated for vehicle emissions testing, but studies showed that 90% or more of the emissions were from the petro-chem industries in the area, and even taking 100% of the vehicles off the road (not just testing them - removing them completely) would have negligible impact on emissions reduction. But the feds mandated that any area with more than x amount of people had to implement vehicle emissions testing.

Around the same time there was a local news story about air quality in the Houston area, and how industries were making improvements. The story was about a preventive maintenance program in a single plant, where the plant spokesperson said their PM efforts were so effective that they had reduced the plant's monthly emissions by an amount equivalent to the entire Houston metro area's automobile traffic. And that was just one plant.

 

Only problem is these clown politicians love to legislate, look at the latest gun bill. Give 'em an inch... pretty soon your classic will only be allowed to be trailered to a show because it lacks airbags or some other BS.

 

^^^this^^^

^^^this too^^^

 

Many of the inspections have gone from, is the car reasonably well maintained and not a hazard to how can we legitimize our existence and dream up new regulations to impose on the peasants.

 

Here they changed laws few years back. Earlier the law was that all cars need to be inspected yearly, excluding museum registered ones, every two years. New law requires all over 40-year old cars to be inspected every 2 years, no matter museum registered or not.

They check all, from lights to tires, from seat-belts to ball-joints. Rust, frame-number, engine externally etc.

Emission laws ( for older ones) goes as follows:
77' and older cars = no emission testing. 78' to 10/86- emission test, CO% 4.5, HC 1000ppm ( so basically if it runs it passes). And then 11/86 until 3-way catalysator, is CO% 3.5 and HC 600ppm, which arent too strict either.

At start of march 21' they also change laws related to increasing your horsepower/ engine, to more loose.
With new laws, i can have unlimited engine size, and max power, calculated by car weight and original engines offered, would be 324hv SAE net. And it would be totally legal.

Just food for thought. I think our laws are fairly loose and fair here for car hobbyists. And i dont think inspection is bad thing. As Joe stated- its not to protect you ( because we all know noone would ever cut corners anywhere ), its to protect others.

 

I certainly don't want inspections here in Indiana. Nor front tags, nor any other stupid vehicle laws. I don't want some dirty scrub messing with my car by the power of the law, nor do I want to put a sticker on the windshields. For that matter, I want lifetime registrations; I'm tired of dealing with bitchy old hens running the BMV and having to be nice to get their state-empowered permissions to run parts of my life.

Any solution along the lines of: "Let's get the government to oppress the entire citizenry to make sure everyone is doing it right" is wrong. The right solution is twofold. First, tell the cops to quit busting people five mph above the limit, and start looking for shitty drivers and shitboxes. Pull over that clueless person doing ten under in the left. That misfire you spoke of? Pull them over and write an equipment violation. Second, that traffic wreck caused by your bad vehicle? No driver's license for you for ten years, and you go to jail on the second one. We need to punish the offenders, not oppress everyone.

 

Yeah, until some yahoo crashes into you because their brakes failed.

People are morons. THIS is why you need inspections:

 

No, THAT is why people need to maintain their vehicles. There is more than one way to get people to do that. I prefer a less oppressive method than mandatory inspection. Make it known that accidents caused by vehicle failure through obvious neglect will result in criminal charges and denial of driving licenses, and people will get the message quickly.

Edit: George Saville had a point. "Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen."

 

Yeah, because that taking personal responsibility thing has been working out so well...

Accidents caused by negligence are already illegal. The problem is that people plead "stupid". ("Well, I'm not an auto mechanic...") Clearly that's not working. And frankly, once you or your family is dead, it's kind of too late for criminal actions.

 

Valid argument. My idea is that the stupid will know someone who has gone to prison for causing a wreck and will get scared into seeing a mechanic every so often.

Ok, fine, I got my own solution. They implement inspection in Indiana, I'll get myself certified and do my own. Problem solved.

 

^^^^------Valid conclusion.

 

Going to repeat myself here to emphasize the point. Deterrence works.

 

Locks keep honest people honest...

 

Ok, I throw in the towel. I still don't like inspections, though.

 

I have to admit, given the number of vehicles I need to get inspected every year, I've also toyed with the idea of getting my own inspection license.

 

Mixed feelings, I just got antique plates, so for the first time I’m exempt. When my car was built PA had inspections every 6 months. Pita. I plan on staying on top of safety as I know I am now liable for the car’s safety. But to do it right I could really use a lift. I’ll be happy if I can schedule a $39.95 PA inspection just to see what I need, bet the local garage won’t do it for the regular PA price.
As with everything else, from pollution to gun control the idiots ruin it for everyone. People will abuse these plates, and then we’ll lose this benefit.

 

PA antique plates used to be a little difficult to get. You had to send pics of all four sides of the car and they would refuse plates for insane reasons. When I finished my 66 Chevelle convertible back in 2005, PA would not give me antique plates because the back tires were bigger than the front. Below is a pic of what the car looked like at that time. Around that time, my brother had a very nice all original paint 63 impala convertible. He was refused plates because they said the paint did not match from side to side. After submitting the car several times, he ended up repainting both sides of the car to get tags. My biggest issue with yearly inspections for my antique cars goes back to a point that was made above by Koda. I do all of my own work on my cars and I don't want some dipsh*t touching my vehicles. My dad worked at a GM dealer for over 30 years. For many of them he was the shop Forman. I cannot tell you how many newly certified "ASE" techs they fired in the last few years he was there because they did not know their *** from a hole in the ground. Numerous times a newly certified tech would leave an oil filter or drain plug loose and blow a customer's motor as they were on their way home. Do you really trust that someone like that will get your lug nuts tight after pulling a wheel to check your brakes? After I was refused an antique plate in 2005, I did not even try to get antique tags for my Chevelle or anything else until he left that dealer because he would take my cars after I went over them for a sticker so it was not a big deal. By the time he left, PA no longer required pics for antique tags. To some of the points made above about yearly inspections forcing people to maintain their vehicles, this only works if people get their car inspected. I know of many people who have been driving uninspected broken down **** for years and have never been pulled over. Once again it comes down to the people who will follow the rules anyway being punished and over regulation doing nothing to stop those who did not care in the first place and still won't/ don't after a bill/ law is passed.

 

Idiots and ignoramuses' will ruin everything for everyone. Hence the "need" (an attempt to make everything idiot-proof) for tire pressure monitoring systems, oil life monitors, etc. It's for people who don't know or don't care about maintenance. The people who, as wisely stated above, think that vehicle maintenance consists of putting in gas, and nothing else. As if a car were a toaster, you just turn it on and off, with no other thought whatsoever.

 

Actually, we have TPMS because after the Ford Explorer/Firestone tire rollover fiasco, Congress had to appear to do SOMETHING. Do not get me started...

 

In Texas a vehicle 25 years old or older is exempt from emission testing of any kind.

 

Here in Calif you must have all smog parts in place they don't have to work just be there. Like 66-67 smog pumps EGR, PCV valve ect. I bought my 72 H/O in Wash. St. and drove it back to Calif. it passed smog as it was a out of State car and must be tested. That was the only time tested.

 

We haven’t seen nothing yet!