Quote:
Originally Posted by JENKIN
Yeah. Besides working every weekend, things seemed to conspire to keep me away from Earls dabob festival. Internal short on rebuilt alternator one year and a range fire the next. Perhaps it's good that I didn't try a third year, looking at the escalating severity of excuses.
Is it even harder to get a car in the road in CA? I read about all the restrictions the state imposes on licensure. I have a half-Alfa that I bought to fix my wrecked spyder that was only in the yard because they couldn't get the mechanical FI to pass emissions.
I'm much better at planning than execution. I guess that is why my shop and garage are stuffed with so many parts for projects that will get done when I have the time....
My kids want me to live forever so they don't have to deal with the stash!!
It's become a joke about fighting over the inheritance because neither one of them wants my car parts.
Guess I should have been enamored with USA muscle cars instead of obscure foreign cars. I'd be better off $$ wise if I had a stash of chevelles and camaros instead of rx7s and svx's.
Oh well - it is what it is.
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Yes, we can't fault you for not trying a third year given the excuse escalation rate!
As far as keeping a car on the road in CA, the challenge for me was facing emissions/smog testing for the first time in over a decade. When we moved out of King County in 2002, I never had to get our cars tested again. Just pay the WA DMV online for tabs renewal once a year, for all they knew the car had 3 wheels, no headlights, and blew black clouds straight from the headers.
But when we moved to CA and registered our two cars at the time, they passed fine. My SVX wasn't in the greatest of shape at the time, but it still passed smog and even the minor inspection at the DMV to get registration transferred (that's a one time deal, there is no other inspection beyond bi-annual smog in CA).
It's been two years now, so it's time for the SVX to get smogged again, or file as a inop (which would save a small bit of money in tabs and insurance, but I'm not sure the implications for ever getting it back on the road once I do that). It has sat in the garage covered for a year as a few things were acting up this time last year, but I put a new battery in over the weekend and changed out fluids and cleaned MAF, intake, etc. Going to try driving it around a bit this week (it can go about 10-15 mins before overheating) and see if I can actually get it to limp through passing SMOG. Will let you know how it goes.
I agree on the muscle car thing. The kids wouldn't be near as worried if you had a shop stuffed full of high value/easy to liquidate USA parts.
