Licensing Stories

[Seymour Snerd]

Ron R has a terrifying thread about dealing with the Caifornia government but it's specific to smog control equipment. I thought it might be a good idea to record some actual experiences with the whole process with SPFs. So here's my first installment.

First step for me (after getting my SB100 sequence number two years ago) was getting a brake and light inspection. Jim C kindly gave me the contact info for the place he used(Ruppels in Burlingame) but in talking to Dennis Peck, Bay Area SPF dealer, I found that Dennis now uses a place a block away from his new shop in San Carlos (Sam, at Vancea Auto Service, 383 Quarry Rd, 650-591-3234) so I went there. Trailered the car (it had 1 mile on the odo, all in my driveway). All Sam did was verify the lights were all illuminating, and then drove it around the block to make sure the brakes worked. So, no headlight aiming, no backup light needed, no 4-way flasher, no jacking or wheel or clip removal. I did have to add a license plate lamp, but SPF provides a harness rolled up in the center of the rear clip for this purpose. Sam's logic, I believe, is that in the case of a new roller-based SPCN he doesn't need to closely inspect the parts that were factory-assembled. I like that logic.

The license plate light I used was from Autozone: Pilot Automotive part # CZ-224W for about $15. It bolts on where the top two plate bolts go and has a long two-wire red/black pigtail that you simply connect to the long SPF two-wired pigtail. I mounted it to a Cruiser Accessories Part # 79050 plastic plate bracket from O'Reilly's that I attached using two of the spoiler retention holes on my Mk II. Neat, clean, and reversible.

PS: Bay Area guys: Dennis is now housed with "San Francisco Sports Cars"

San Francisco Sports Cars: We Buy and Sell Exotic Sports Cars

which is packed with interesting cars. Definitely worth a visit (bring a checkbook). The old Redwood City shop now holds just some overflow cars (including a Lotus 70 F5000).

Next up: CHP VIN assignment/inspection, hopefully next week.

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter two, in which my VIN is verfied:

Made an appointment with Office Brown at Redwood City CHP. He asked me to open all the hatches, he looked it over, asked if there were a chassis-stamped serial number ("Not that I now of"), asked if it were a replica of a specific car since the MSO describes it as "Rerplica of a 1966 Vintage sports car" which is of course incoherent and meaningless. So I gave him a one paragraph history of the Mk II. He asked if the car had a specific model name (Yes, "GT40"). He did some paperwork and handed me back my filled out and signed "Application for Assigned Vehicle Indentification Number Plate." He did not add a plate since as far as he is concerned the SPF VIN plate in the interior is fine. So my VIN is GT40P2160. He said call him if any issues arose, and that was it.

Next stop early Monday morning: BAR Referee at Skyline College. Made this appointment via the "BAR Referee Scheduing Center 800.622.7733" at which the gentleman who helped me verified with me that I had all the needed paperwork (above VIN inspection, SB100 Sequence number, etc.) When I gave him the sequence number he noted with some humor that mine was two years old, but said that the numbers don't expire and that they still get them from all the way back at the beginning of the program ('02?). So this contradicts what DMV told me a long time ago, namely, that I had two years to finish the process. Of course it ain't over til it's over....

 

[Jim Craik]

Alan,

Thats fabulous!

I knew you could do it! When I told you my Vin# was GT40P/2264, you seemed a little skeptical, congratulations!

Keep in mind when you go to the smog guys, at least in my case their biggest and quite frankly only concern was to confirm that I did not buy it with the motor and tranny installed.

I had some paperwork in the folder I took that was from Dennis Peck, showing the chassis cost, engine cost, tranny cost and intalation cost. This was somthing we put together to show my wife the approxamate total cost.

It was a mistake to take that, I spent a fair amount of time trying to convince him that it was just information and not a bill from Dennis.

In the end he beilieved me, but it was scarry none the less!

One other thing that might help, they were getting ready to put in on the dyno and stick the probe in the exhaust, when they noted the ZF tranny. Apparently they have had issues with some ZF trannies and had instruction not to dyno them, so they just signed the papers and gave me the life time exemption!!!!

As I was leaving, the guy reminded me that this was a "life time exemption", and if, when I get my regstration renewal there is a smog request that it was an error and to call them. I love California!

Good luck on Monday!

 

[Ron R.]

Cool.

CHP assigned my vin as "GT40P2265". But did add a stamped plate to that effect.

Jim, I'm going to assume that you went to the BAR a number of years ago. I don't think they bother "sniffing" the exhaust any more. Pretty much just check to see if the smog equipment is in place, and sigh the papers.

Then again, what do I know, I'm still waiting to get past the BAR inspection.

 

[Jim Craik]

Yes Ron, it was in 2008, at least back then, I had absolutly no smog equipment of any kind and although the motor was brand new, they did not ask or care

 

[Seymour Snerd]

.... their biggest and quite frankly only concern was to confirm that I did not buy it with the motor and tranny installed.

That's consistent with something I read on another forum (probably Club Cobra) where they wanted to see lots of pictures of the build. The appointment guy for the BAR referee told me that "the more documentation you bring, the better" but said nothing about pictures or proving you built it. I feel lucky I'd read recent postings on this. So I've printed out every picture I have of the car taken apart in my crappy little garage in Encinitas. Hopefully that satisfies them; had I known that going in I would have been more carefull to document the various evidences of DIY building (scraped knuckles, bruises, ruined hand-towels, wrecked parts, broken Harbor Freight tools, etc.)

IIRC Dennis Peck also told me they no longer do dyno runs either.

And re: the VIN; somehow I thought the process included assigning a CHP or DMV-generated VIN. I may have confused that with the temp. license number they do generate. Reading over the Club Cobra/Mustang Ranch writeup I think it's time for a rewrite to clarify some of this.

 

[Jim Craik]

Alan,

Yes I had heard all those horror stories too, about riveting a long, ugly Vin# to my dash. I couldn't believe it when he looked at that little plate on the firewall and said that was fine!

As for the BAR thing, outside of receipts I had no documentation at all, plus I had that paper from Dennis that seemed to say just the opposit of what had happened. I was still able to get through it.

 

[Rich E.]

Alan,

As I understand it you do not have a "Blue plate" VIN?

If so I don't understand why not. You need a CHP assigned VIN for identification during the life of the car.

 

[Richard]

In Idaho even though they were more concerned with getting the sales tax then when or where the car came from or who built it I couldn't convince them that the car already had a VIN assigned by the manufacture. The women said it was a non compliant VIN (way shorter then the standard VINs used on today's cars). So what she did was assign an Idaho state VIN that had the same number on characters as the SPF VIN. Stupid logic is just that STUPID. Great to hear you got the car running. Is it as scary to drive as I think?

 

[Jim Craik]

Alan,

As I understand it you do not have a "Blue plate" VIN?

If so I don't understand why not. You need a CHP assigned VIN for identification during the life of the car.

Rich,

I'm sure Alan will chime in, but yes GT40P2264 is my CHP assigned Vin#. The CHP officer, saw my plate on the firewall and said "let me see if that number is taken", he went inside, and a few minutes later came out and said "thats your Vin#", it was that simple. That is the Vin# on my Pink Slip.

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Alan,

As I understand it you do not have a "Blue plate" VIN?

If so I don't understand why not. You need a CHP assigned VIN for identification during the life of the car.

Right, just like Jim said. I think what happened is that since my "CHP assigned Vin" is GT40P2160 and since that in the officer's judgement the existing plate is enough. When I asked him about that he just said "I can put one on if you want, but why drill holes in your nice new car?"

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Stupid logic is just that STUPID. Great to hear you got the car running. Is it as scary to drive as I think?

That's a perfect bureaucracy story. I wonder what they do with all the old cars like (say) a '74 Lotus Europa with a number like 3969R. Did they go back an assign new VINs to all of them?

Scary? Definitely but mostly because of the sound... that and wondering which of my great mechanical designs (eg the accessory drive brackets or the dry sump plumbing) will go "boom" and leave me by the side of the road. Hopefully the latter fear will subside with time... As for the former, it's definitely a love/hate thing. I absolutely love firing it up. I could play with that start button all day.....

 

[Richard]

There logic is you built it so it doesn't have a VIN. Stupid is what stupid does.

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter Three, in which P2160 gets heavily photographed:

I went to my BAR Referee apointment today. The referee started out by explaining the process, which reminded me of what Dennis Peck had already told me. These days the BAR appointment is mostly about taking photographs of the car from all sides, and sending them to Sacramento. Nothing by the way of "inspection" happens other than verifying I have a closed PVC. Then hopefully in about a week I get told that I'm cleared to fully register at DMV.

This is a recent change in procedure, and I think I understand why, although I am not positive. Based on putting together several fragments of conversation with the referee and the other guys in the shop, I think the BAR discovered that people were SPCN'ing truly ridiculous vehicles (the example the referee mentioned was a sand rail but the Ariel Atom was also mentioned as "iffy") and so is looking at the pictures to make a judgement about whether the vehicle is truly street-worthy (my word). GT40s are pretty arguably streetworthy since, after all, many of them were street cars in the day.

IAE the referee implied i might have to come back for another inspection. Either way, I now wait for the phone call.

Now here's the really cool, but unrelated thing I learned while there. There is a brand new process in CA associated with the old "special interest" vehicle license that allows collector cars (defined as fewer than 1,000 sold in CA, unmodified, covered by collector car insurance, and at least 35 years old (that's 1979 next month) ) to be exempted from the biennial smog inspection and the visual inspection at registration time. I spoke to someone at BAR and came away uncertain as to whether there would be a tail-pipe test, but if there were it would be one appropriate for the year so for older cars would probably be easy to pass just by leaning it out at idle.

There is an associated questionnaire
http://www.smogcheck.ca.gov/80_BARResources/ftp/pdfdocs/Collector%20Motor%20Vehicle%20QA.pdf
which contains some explanatory text and references to the state codes.

The relevant new state code is from SB 734 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED which says in part:

"a collector motor vehicle, as defined in Section 259 of the Vehicle Code, is exempt from those portions of the test required by subdivision (f) of Section 44012 [visual inspection] if the collector motor vehicle meets all of the following criteria:
(1) Submission of proof that the motor vehicle is insured as a
collector motor vehicle, as shall be required by regulation of the bureau.
(2) The motor vehicle is at least 35 model-years old.
(3) The motor vehicle complies with the exhaust emissions
standards for that motor vehicle's class and model-year as prescribed by the department, and the motor vehicle passes a functional inspection of the fuel cap and a visual inspection for liquid fuel
leaks."
​

So, in some respects we are released from the current "1975 or older" exemption and can now register more and more old machinery as the years go by (I'm thinking Berlinetta Boxer) without having to worry about grey-market add-on catalytic converters, etc. The cars is supposed to be unmodified, so you get to run the "Euro" version here.

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter 3A: Licensing Fees

Still waiting for call from BAR (have made an appointment to go see the referee again since they haven't responded to my last request for update). However got my TOP extended and verfied something I suspected but wasn't sure about the licensing fees: If your project goes over a calendar year boundary (as mine has a couple times) you pay licensing fees each year regardless of whether your car is licensed yet. In other words, the licensing fee clock starts when you get your SB100 certificate, no matter how long you take in getting the licensing process completed. So think of this as an inducement to have your project pretty much done before you go for your SB100 certificate.

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter 4, in which I get a "green light".

I took the bull by the horns and scheduled another BAR Referee visit. After several calls back and forth with BAR central it was concluded that my paperwork had been lost. So the BAR referee said he would send it in again, and I left.

An hour later he called me to say that I had a "green light" and just need to bring the car back (with closed PVC system intact) to get my sticker.

So I guess my licensing story is over.

In the intervening two months, however, I consoled myself by buying the car below. Now what do I do? I don't know which one to drive....

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter 5, in which I go through the green light: After the phone call telling my I had a green light (meaning the BAR authorities were satisfied that my car was not an example of "small volume manufacturing", I made another BAR appointment (10 AM the following morning!).

At this meeting the car was simply visually inspected in particular to verify I have a closed PCV system. That was easy to demonstrate and took about 30 seconds. I believe that is the only way I could have walked away without my sticker.

The only other questions I got were "where is the VIN plate?" and "what year engine would you like to show; it doesn't really matter since were doing this by body year so it's up to you. 1966?" So for consistency's sake I said "yes, 1966".

After a few minutes of keying things into the smog system computer the Referee came back out with a sticker and we discussed where on the car to put the BAR sticker. It needs to be a non-removable smooth surface. I looked for one in the front compartment but could not find one large enough that wasn't the lower surface where any coolant leaks would collect. So finally it went on the painted surface to the right of the coolant bottle which is and area just barely large enough. He warned me to protect if from any kind of solvents and that if it were damaged not to touch it, bring it in, and they would issue another.

And to be clear, the car was not operated during the inspection; IOW no smog test, dyno run, or anything like that. In fact, I believe you could get through the whole process with a non-running car; you might get tired of pushing it around.

Next step: take stack of papers to DMV and get my plate.

Side notes: while the referee was working on mine I asked a couple younger techs what were the kinds of issues that caused people to fail. They said "only one, that multiple cars are being built by someone with two close a relationship to the kit or roller vendor, so it falls into a small manufacturer category." I said "what about the PCV requirement?" "Nobody fails that, they just go fix and come back." They did say that the want the build to occur in California but I'm a little suspicious of that since there is no such requirement in any of the official text I read.

I asked if they were rejecting any really wild cars like Ariel Atoms and they said "No, we've just recently approved a couple of those."

I told them a vague story of having a friend in another part of the state who took a car just like mine through and was told he had to have an air pump; did they have any idea why that might have happened? They looked puzzled for a bit and said, basically, that doesn't make sense. The only explanation they could think of is that it was being approved based on an engine year where all the engines of that year had air pumps.

 

[Jim Craik]

Alan, Congratulations!

It sounds like you have finally reached the end of the proccess!

Once you get those plates, it driving time!

When you come up to Skyline, we would love to see your car!

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Actually I've taken a couple runs on Skyline with my Temp. Reg. Yesterday I went south a couple miles and goosed it a little.... pine cones were dropping off of trees....

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Chapter 5A --- Just got back from DMV with my plates. This fairy tale is over.

Summary of findings:

1. For Brake and Light, the only equipment you have to add to an SPF GT40 in CA is a license plate light, and the wiring is already there. Trailering to B&L meant I didn't need a one-day temp. permit.
2. For BAR you must have a closed PCV system.
3. For BAR your builder should not have a close, more specifically, repeat-business relationship with your SPF dealer. If he does you might get delays, resistance up to and including rejection by BAR. You need to be able to prove it was not built "on spec".
4. It was way easier than I expected and if my car had been totally ready when I started I could have been done in 3 weeks. BAR appts. were usually a couple days away. CHP was only a few days. All in all it took 3 DMV visits, one Brake and Light, one CHP, and three BAR visits, although one of those was due to "lost paperwork". Each of those was an hour or less.