Inspections - Keeping Lots Of Cool Cars Off The Road

"Justin Hughes" (justinhughes54) 11/21/2014 at 21:09 • Filed to: None

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Most states have mandatory vehicle inspections. And they do keep us safe from drivers who are so inattentive at vehicle maintenance they'll drive on corded tires with no tail lights and a wheel about to fall off until their rusted Fred Flintstone floorboards give way and the whole car breaks in half. But they're also the bane of car enthusiasts, taking our beloved steeds off the roads - sometimes to save the environment, or sometimes for little or no good reason whatsoever. So many times I've dreaded that time of year rolling around again, hoping against hope that they'd slap their sticker of approval on my car for another year, and cringing at the legalized extortion I was about to suffer by driving an older car in, making their eyes light up with dollar signs.

Back in the days of the dreaded dyno testing - rollers that would supposedly test your emissions under "real world" conditions, rather than graph horsepower and torque as they were meant to - I had a rough time getting my car to pass. It was a 1991 Honda Civic wagon, with a basic D15B2 motor and no serious modifications - my fog lights, hood stripes, and genuine Civic Type R badge certainly could not be taken seriously. Yet no matter what I did, I could not get it to pass Massachusetts emissions. I'd be stuck in traffic behind a slow moving dump truck belching thick clouds of black smoke into the air with impunity, while my fuel sipping Civic with no visible smoke failed emissions. So I did the only logical thing - I moved to a part of Maine that doesn't require emissions testing. (Okay, there were other reasons for the move, too, but that's not important right now.) Once a legal resident, I registered it there immediately, and bam, it was instantly legal - including driving back to Massachusetts to flip the bird at the inspection station that kept failing me.

When I moved back to Massachusetts, I had the ugliest B13 Nissan Sentra SE-R ever. I called it the Millenium Falcon - it didn't look like much, but it had it where it counted. That was definitely one of the most fun cars I've ever owned. Unfortunately, though, the rust was already starting to win. Maine's standards are more lenient, plus I may or may not have "known a guy." But when I accidentally pushed a small hole into the rocker panel with my finger, I knew there was no way I'd be able to bring this car with me and keep it street legal. I sold it in Maine and got yet another Miata.

The worst, though, was my 2003 P71 (that's short for "Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor"). In April of 2012, the ABS failed. Whoop de do. Yes, I saw the posts on CrownVic.net saying "OMG DON'T DRIVE WITHOUT ABS AT ALL EVER OR YOU'LL SKID STRAIGHT INTO A STACK OF CRATES FILLED WITH 200 TONS OF TNT AND BLOW UP EVERYTHING EVER!!!!" or words to that effect. The truth is that I learned to drive without ABS. I've rarely had cars equipped with it. Some of them I've even driven on race tracks and lived to tell the tale. It's called "threshold braking." And it worked perfectly on the P71. I didn't notice any early lockup in the rear, as some warned I would. The brakes themselves were perfectly fine, so I kept driving it like that for many months.

The following February came around, and so did my inspection. Now, according to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! site, an ABS light will NOT fail an inspection. However, in Ford's infinite wisdom, they decided that an ABS failure would also light up the BRAKE warning light - a bright red beacon on the dashboard that screams "Fail me now!" That light is an automatic inspection failure, even though the brakes worked fine and had been for months.

So I paid the $93 for a brake system diagnosis. If it was a broken wire or something else easily fixed, no problem - fix it, pass it, and keep on trucking. But naturally, it was the ABS module itself. The part was a few hundred bucks, and of course it's buried under the dashboard, requiring hours of labor to get to and replace. Since it was the middle of winter and I had no time and no garage (even to dismantle the gauge cluster and pull a bulb or two), it was going to cost me about $1000 in the end. And even then, there was no way to know if something else was wrong that would also fail inspection, since the system can't be diagnosed without the module. It wasn't worth it for an 11 year old Ford with 160k miles. I traded it in on a Subaru BRZ instead. It burned me, though - this was a perfectly good car with many miles left, forced off the road by a technicality. I'd been considering a BRZ to replace it eventually, but I wasn't where I wanted to be financially before doing it. The dealer made it work anyway, and so I got my most expensive inspection sticker ever. It just happened to have a shiny new BRZ attached to it, which I admit did cushion the blow a bit.

I think any gearhead who tries to keep older cars on the road where inspection laws rule has some stories like this. What are some of yours?

(Top photo credit: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

MitsubiShe > Justin Hughes 11/21/2014 at 21:31

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Hawaii's inspection laws are dumb. Didn't keep me off the road, but kept me on stock suspension until I moved.

Right now I have illegal tint (in that any tint is illegal here), but my exhaust is legal...for now.

f86sabre > Justin Hughes 11/21/2014 at 21:43

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Out of curiosity, and not intending to be contrary to your opening comment, I went to look at how many states had non-emissions related safety checks and it is fewer than "most". I have never lived in a state that required anything other than emissions. I feel for you guys who have to put up with it. Only states with blue require safety checks.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_i…

TheVancen- In Pursuit of a Greater Payday and Car Parts > Justin Hughes 11/21/2014 at 21:51

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Theyre gonna LOVE me when I go to get the Turd safetied. I wonder if they'll clue in that it used to have ABS at all...

Its kind of telling that the only good picture i have of it, its on jack stands.

PowderHound > f86sabre 11/21/2014 at 21:57

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summit county utah only does safety inspections. No emissions. Just check to make everything properly functions. And the front tint isn't too dark. They got me on that

Justin Hughes > f86sabre 11/21/2014 at 22:24

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Interesting. Being from Massachusetts, in the heart of mandatory safety and emissions inspections, I tend to accept it as normal - sucky, but normal. Some states, like RI, have gone to a two year interval, which is nice. I do see that a few states, like NJ, have done away with them altogether. This map could be useful for figuring out where I want to live and have my jalopies - er, I mean, project cars...

Justin Hughes > TheVancen- In Pursuit of a Greater Payday and Car Parts 11/21/2014 at 22:25

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As long as the ABS light is off...!

Big Bubba Ray > Justin Hughes 11/21/2014 at 22:43

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Missouri, where I reside requires safety inspections for every car that is sold either by private party or by a dealer. Emissions inspections are required for cars that are newer than 1996 with an OBDII port. I couldn't get my Datsun on the road for a while after I bought it because the fucking horn didn't work. Without the horn, it wouldn't pass safety inspections. It's a bit absurd.

TheVancen- In Pursuit of a Greater Payday and Car Parts > Justin Hughes 11/21/2014 at 23:10

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ABS light? What ABS light? (Pulls bulb and paints over the light to be sure.)

V8Demon - Prefers Autos for drag racing. Fite me! > Justin Hughes 11/22/2014 at 00:58

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this was a perfectly good car with many miles left, forced off the road by a technicality

...And this is why late '80s-early 2000s cars will be worth a shit ton when they reach 30 yrs old and are in good condition. I'm watching it happen now with one of the cars I own as well as parts for it which have SKYROCKETED in the past 2 years. Luckily I've amassed a little hoard of parts. Wish I could store an set of NOS fenders and a hood.

Old-Busted-Hotness > Justin Hughes 11/22/2014 at 06:53

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Way way back when, the Ohio state patrol used to do roadside safety inspections. They'd pull over a whole line of cars, give the decent-looking ones a pass, and check all the others to see if the lights & wipers worked. I failed once due to a cracked windshield. If you passed, you got a windshield sticker. Fail and you get a fix-it ticket and have to check in at a patrol station once it's fixed so you can do it all over again. They quit doing that around 1983.

Now we have E-Check every two years, but only in "heavily polluted" cities. Cleveland's a goddamn ghost town and we still have to E-Check.

theloudmouth > Justin Hughes 11/23/2014 at 11:13

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This, or the lack thereof, is the only redeeming thing about Michigan.

Reborn Pyrrhic > f86sabre 12/27/2014 at 19:06

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Alaska does emissions inspection if you live in Anchorage or Mat Su valley. That's about 80% of the state's population but maybe less than 5% of its area. Fairbanks used to have emissions inspection but not any more. The rest of the state is inspections free.