Rich, The 1966 standards only apply if your car was sold new in CA. For example, having a CA build site on the VIN. By the way, for all those Republicans who are denouncing "liberals" for their problems, you should know that Governor Ronald Reagan signed the legislation in 1967 which founded CARB!!!!
Well what can we do about this? I live very far away from the left coast, but I don't want any old car guys to lose their cars! Email to State legislature? Petetion from old car owners country-wide? Get enough data point to prove that old cars are such a teensy part of the problem that it's a waste of time effort and money to crack down on old cars, and show them were it's best to focus their efforts? All that's well and good, but doesn't address the problem we have right now. What we need to do is get a list of what years and models of Buick's use what emission controls, where they go, and how they function. Also what aftermarket parts are 50 state legal and which aren't. We also need to know where to get the parts and how to install them correctly. No matter what steps we can take as old car owners to combat this, it will take time. California classic car owners, protect yourselves by getting this information and be ready to read your new local and State laws oh so carefully, and either learn how to retrofit your car with the proper smog equipment, or find someone who can. If this does come to pass, I also suggest that if you have a trusted and I mean **trusted** friend elsewhere in the country, sell him or her your car(s) for a nominal fee, with the understanding that if it does become legal for your car in Cally again, you will purchase the vehicle back. that sounds desperate, I know, but it's better than the car being crushed. You could also look for secure long-term storage out of state. I'm also beginning to conjure up images of cruel and unusual punishment in the form of policemen restraining private citizens while thier property is destroyed by State Law...sounds silly, but more than one Law has been repealed on Constitutional grounds, and this is starting to sound like a violation of your rights to privacy. Unless ANY car could have this test done to it, I can see this as a violation of my Rights. I can have a brand new car and yank the smog equipment, too, but the car won't get crushed on the spot...see the difference? Start thinking of this stuff NOW before it's too late to!
Chris, Any car can have the test done to it. If you try to import a 2003 Lamborgini without US emissions controls, you have three days to re-export it or it will be crushed. So, the rules don't just apply to old cars. Here in VA, the the emissions check operators (local service stations) key your VIN into the test computer. The screen then shows a diagram of the factory smog equipment. No doubts about it - the car either has all the stuff or it doesn't. You can appeal to the State Police if you think it's wrong, but the system looks pretty well researched and designed.
emissions!! also, think about a resident of california purchasing a classic car from a canadian seller . if the car was originally built in fremont, as my 72 gs was, for export to canada, there would be a problem. cars destined for canada prior to 1973, were constructed without the air pump on the motor . problem ! it would not pass the ca standards . gerry 72 gs 350 ht #s 98 gs sc3800
I understand that 100%. Of course new cars in every State have emission regulations. What I am referring to is the standpoint that the cars can be crushed because of failure to meet the standards. Your example is a very certain and specific exception, however. You are not addressing cars that are NOT imported. There will always be an exception to the rule. What if your car is a new Viper, and you yanked the emission controls? Let's take an '03 Skylark and a '66 Skylark as our examples Both get pulled over at the same time and taken to the same facility for testing. Both fail. The '03 owner and the '66 Buick owner get told to fix the problem, and a ticket. The '66 Skylark owner is told that if he fails again, his car will be crushed on the spot. The '03 guy gets told he will get fined. Next week, both get pulled over again and fined. Are both cars crushed? No, only the '66 Skylark. The '66 Buick owner is out of a car, while the '03 owner's gets towed to impound at worst. Please do not misunderstand me; I am fully aware that all States have emission regulations, and all new cars or cars up to a certain age must be inspected and meet safety as well as emission requirements, older cars being held to standards set for that year car, or safety inspection only. I can not comment on imported cars, and as they are the exception rather than the rule, and not really our interest here, I am not going to try. We are getting a little bit away from trying to help each other out, and more toward arguing a point here. I don't want to argue anything, especially a new car who's import status negates it's relevance to old cars being crushed; I want to help out the old car guys who are faced with the potential of losing their private property. My point is still that the old car owner is being treated unfairly and possibly illegally in a Constitutional sense; singling out a particular type of car for a violation, intending to fail it on the inspection, and then destroying it on the spot would be argued by me to be a cruel and unusual punishment, and as such, against the spirit of Federal law, and possibly a question of Constitutional legality. If ANY car has the same "one strike and you're car gets crushed on the spot in front of you" law applied to it, then it's not an Unusual punishment, but I see no evidence to the contrary. I'm sure there's more to this than meets the eye, and I'd love to read the Law on this and ask a person or two I know about whether or not California can do this and not violate it's own, or the country's Constitutional Rights that it guarantees the protection of.
emissions how can u retroactively invoke a new law, back to 1966 ? what is the position of gm or ford or chrysler on this subject ? someone with the financial backing is going to have to bring a law suit against the state to contend the constitutionality of this law. eventhough this is a state initiative/law, i believe that your u.s. supreme court hesitates to become involved in cases involving state laws . your rights are being trampled on !! i guess that the gov wants all vehicles to be the new hybrids . what will happen to the unlicenced off road vehicles or race cars or dragsters ? here is a similar problem that occurred in montreal, quebec a couple of years ago , at the dragstrip . canada banned the use of gasoline containing lead many years ago. apparently most of the dragsters , from the u.s. at that time, that were running gasoline had to have lead in the fuel . canada would not wave this law to allow the races to occur. thus no drag races !!. gerry
They would not be retroactively invoking a new law. They would be applying the original mandated standards, which have not been enforced in recent years.
emissions so let us get this straight . the emissions tests, to be applied, will be based on the california state standards for the model year of the vehicle ? yes/no . if yes, then what is the beef ? u fellows that have upgraded your engines, ported & polished the heads, installed headers, tuned your carb, added an hei ignition should pass the test with flying colours , as your engines now breathe & run far more efficiently . if u have removed your pollution devices from the motor, then the search will be on for parts/pieces . is there not a penalty for removing the anti smog devices ? please do not think that i support crushing these classic cars on the fly ! i abhor the thought !! if your car cannot pass the testing no matter what, then at least give u a chance to sell the car out of state . gerry 72 gs 350 ht #s
The fear is: since the years listed seem to target muscle cars, and the fact that in the past CARB has pulled some shady stuff, they will make the test very difficult indeed to pass. I am not an expert on CA. State law by any means, but let's imagine that say in 1970, you moved to SoCal with your '66 Buick from out of State, and it passed State laws at the time. Then you sold it, and it remained in State...now all of a sudden, the current owner finds out that his "Original California car" that has been passing inspection for years, actually needs a piece of smog equipment that it never got from the factory, because only Claifornia cars ever got them...only he's never even SEEN the part, the car never had it. And now some jackass with a regulations book says the car is a gross polluter and needs to be destroyed, so sorry, here's a bus ticket home. Here's another solution: go to an ASAE certified shop and ask them to install the smog equipment (you'd better know what it needs, yourself, before you do this). Then keep that receipt with you. if they pull you over, and the car fails, scream bloody murder that a State certified mechanic repaired the car in accordance with State Law and here's the receipt. If it kept the car out of the crusher, I'd do this every year. If this Law really gets enacted as reported here, somebody will get hurt very badly or get killed, all over a stupid vehicular emssions test. Not good for Cally's image.
The Big 3 probably would turn a deaf ear to our cries for help thinking they might sell more cars if this "crop" is off the road..... ......unfortunately they'd be missing the mark, yet again, and whittling away whatso ever thin thread of brand loyalty that may tsill exist between "us" and "them"
Chris, Your example is faulty. A 1966 car orginally sold elsewhere than CA is not required to have CA smog equipment. A better example would be the case of a 1966 CA-sold car that has been exempt from testing under their SB-42 bill for the past four years, and the owner trashing the smog stuff. Now, that car can be tested again under the new mobile test rules.
This is one of the more depressing threads I've read in some time. I have several random observations & questions. I also tend to not get involved in political discussons, but I'm going to do it this time at the risk of getting flamed. I am assuming the CARB is bunch of non-elected officials, that turn over to some degree with each election cycle. One of the biggest problems I have, and I think this country has, (some of you in the TC area familar with MAC & the Met Council know what I mean) is with appointed bodies making decisions that affect all of our lives to a large or small degree. Someone please explain why Cal. keeps electing the left wing/liberal/dems every time. I don't get it. There is no balance there. I can vouch for that, I lived in the Bay Area for several years in the mid-80s and I left cause it was wackoville. I bought my 66 Impala there in 86. I couldn't get registration until I had it smogged even though the car at the time was over 20 years old (Nov. of 86) The DMV didn't care. I guess they did it by calendar year, not model year. I was lucky and the thing still had all the factory smog stuff still on it. Someone stated that the CARB posts its legal notices on public meetings AFTER they have been held. That sounds highly illegal to me. Why haven't the hoards of lawyers jumped all over that? This type of legislation and mentality can be reversed! We had useless smog laws and tests here for years, and have since been repealed. At one time, ALL car got the smog test (oh I forgot to mention, it was ONLY in the 7 county metro area - not outstate. A tax because of the geographical location of your residence) Then it was scaled back to exempt cars 5 years old or newer. Oh goody. Finally, someone with some sense decided that our air was clean enough with mostly newer vehicles in this area of the country to drop all the smog check crap. We have an obsolescence plan here - its called road salt.
Like I said, I'm no expert on Cally law. I'm just trying to think up some scenarios that would be a good precedent to cite, or a situation that an old car owner can use to argue against this ridiculous law. here's another thought: How many years does the average car owner own their car before trading it in? 4 years? Let's use that as an example. Every four years, a car gets traded in, for the average owner, which basically means, ever 4 years, another car needs to be produced to satisfy that owner's needs. Think about all the fossil fuels and pollution caused by the manufacture of that new car, every four years. Mining ore, transporting it, processing, forming steel, transporting it, making the parts, making new plastic equipment, glass, computer controls, emission controls, manufacturing of the actual vehicle, then the cars' own pollution and fuel use. This is once every four years that this happens again, so the new car owner gets a new car when he wants one. Look at my old car for an opposite example. Made in 1969, and on the road since. 33 years, let's say. That's over eight cars that DIDN'T get made to replace mine. That's 8 times the manufacting process didn't pollute or waste fuels to replace my car. And like most old car owners who are into cars as a hobby, mine's in nice shape. So what's more wasteful and more polluting? Turning raw materials into cars eight times, or my old car? I seriously doubt, that even if you dismiss the pollution caused by manufacturing the other eight cars, that if you multiply the emissions from my car by eight, it will be more than those eight other cars' emissions.
LOL, it's a much more insidious plan that just crushing the car! The road salt plan did in my rear quarters, doors, rockers and fenders. Is it harder to fight City Hall than it is to fight rust? I wonder if we could just POR-15 the folks over at CARB...
Maybe someone should just publish the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the members of the CARB!!:Brow: If everyone knew who AND WHERE they were - maybe they might 'see things' a little more clearly. Especially after non-stop phone calls, letters, and occasional 'visits' for 'friendly discussions'!!:grin: Time to put a little more pressure on this little 'secret society'!!:TU: Even my sister, who isn't a car person...can't understand the logic of this latest CARB action!? It's her observation (along with anyone else that is intelligent), that most of the older cars running around here in SoCal are owned by enthusiasts that keep their vehicles in a good state of tune!! Attrition will take care of all the older vehicles that are owned by non-enthusiasts, that don't care about their cars.
This piss me off! Since 30 years, you can do what you wa t to do with your car, an d NOW, you have to conform with norms.. WTF! Do a test now, keep the result and use it as reference for each car... If it get worst, then give a ticket and tell to the guy to do something... opnly the government is so stupid to do things like that( or they get money from compagnies on every new car sold:af: we never know what's happening behind the walls...) that's one of reasons(future smog test AND the price of gasoline here:af: :af: :af: ) why i rebuild my 307 olds instead to put in a 350 buick(or a 455 , i found somes in junkyards)
I know two people who would greet them for a "friendly discussion" with a M1 Tank with a side order of an AK47. Don't be skeered Mr. Politician, I'm here to "help"...
If only it were that easy...we need these political schmucks on our side, though...I know you're kidding, but what we need to be seen as is intelligent, concerned hobbyists who understand the crisis of pollution and the threat it represents, but that we also understand that spending taxes on a non-issue such as this only allows public perception, and not the real problem, to be addressed. In essense, that old cars are not the boogey-man, it's the companies that get eco-credits for crushing old cars and spend them to excuse their own polluting ways that are the real villains....and all because of money. Being brutish and reactionary dooms us to failure...it's a popularity contest as much as anything else, and they are seen as people who want to help, by many.
