<VV> State Inspection Wars

[Tony Underwood]

At 09:25 hours 12/08/2004 -0500, Hank Kaczmarek wrote:
>All
>I forgot
>
>BTW, Way To Go Smitty!!!!
>
>and for all of the rest of us, The Vairologist has taught another lesson!
>
>Don't take any crap off of an inspector. They are human, capable of error and
>negligence, and these days most are too young to understand much less
remember
>a car like the Corvair.  As Jack Mc Coy tells his younger assistants on Law
>and Order...."It was the 60's, you had to be there!!!"      


Trouble is, I can relate some of the nonsense I pulled in the '60s and '70s
and nobody believes it...  


But I was there.    
Maybe shoulda been somewhere else when I think about it...   ;)   

I didn't get mixed up with Corvairs in any serious capacity until about 25
years ago so '60s-'70s antics with Vairs was something I missed.   Mopar
musclecars were what got me in trouble during those times...  

A guy we knew as "Cowboy" had a '66 Chevelle SS, had a walnut sized hole in
one of the mufflers.   Low budget, he... inspection time came along and he
duct-taped a sheet of beer can metal over the hole and sprayed the muffler
with undercoating and then drove the car to the inspection station a block
down the road from his house, everything still relatively cool.  The
inspection guy did his thing and then stuck his hands over tail pipes and
listened for leaks, passed the car and put a sticker on it.    Cowboy knew
the shop didn't lift cars and look under... they jacked them up to check
brakes etc.    He did this at least twice.   

Another guy had a Nova wagon, loved the things, and we know about those
early Novas with the coil-over A-arms.   His developed a case of
bad-balljoint'itis to the point that one day he jacked the car up to check
the rattly front suspension and the upper spindle joint came OFF the A-arm
and the wheel just kinda flopped like a broken wing.   He carefully fitted
the ball back into the socket of the joint and put the car back down... and
drove it like that for a month before he replaced the ball joint.    During
this time my brother said he saw the Nova wagon on I-581 one afternoon
tear-ass'ing along at almost 80 mph, with gravity holding the front end
together.    

Then there was the '65 Monza (I've told this story before) 4-door that my
buddy Dallas bought from a preacher... that had finally failed an
inspection so it got sold cheap.   The car was so incredibly rusty it was
amazing.    It was flexible and it crunched when it flexed.  You could
drive this car (which ran quite well) and put on the brakes and feel the
plywood floor boards (the entire front horizontal section of floor was all
plywood) flexing under your feet as the body tried to bend in the middle.
The windshield frame was rusted away and had RTV and *TAPE* sealing the
windshield, which didn't work... if it rained, the windshield frame leaked
water onto the dash and your knees.   
The rear floors were mostly missing but the carpet was still in somewhat
presentable condition so at a glance the back floors looked OK... but it
was mostly just carpet atop a rusty mesh that used to be metal floor.
The trick with this car is that it had passed an inspection 6 months
previous, and the car was so rusty it could NOT have passed a year or two
or three before.    The plywood front floors showed considerable wear and
tear on both sides from feet treading on them.   The preacher must have
been driving this car like this for a long time, and evidently "knew
somebody" who passed the car... over and over again.   If that car had ever
been involved in an accident it would have folded up like a house of cards.
   We removed the windshield, rusty frame and duct tape and all, by just
lifting it off the car.   

Dallas drove this car with its REJECTED sticker on the windshield for about
a week while he had his '63 coupe on jackstands doing brakes or something,
just for the Helluvit before we parted it out and returned the Preachers
tags etc.   I myself fear cars that make crunching noises when you apply
brakes...     

One time I was at Wimmer Tire Co getting a sticker on the Goldwing...  a
guy ahead of me got a quick once-over by the inspector and his rather worn
looking 20 year old Olds Delta-88 with faded green metallic paint got a
sticker without as much as a brake drum being pulled.   Didn't even check
the horn, just stuck a sticker on it.   

Then  the inspector gave my 'Wing a going-over with a fine tooth comb
before he gave me a sticker, took about 20 minutes...  for a Goldwing
motorcycle.    I couldn't stand it, had to ask.    How come the faded Olds
got a one minute glance and then a sticker while the Goldwing had to be
crawled under to look at stuff like brake pads and fluid levels in the rear
end and whether the running lights went off when the High beam was on, or
something...  

He said, "I know that guy.  He bought the car new and he never lets
anything go wrong on it.   His car wouldn't be in here if it wasn't able to
pass.   I don't know you."     

It made sense.     ;)   
 

tony..