Yes, I failed my inspection.
The day started miserably. I borrowed a 24' trailer that was hitched to a small dump truck to haul the car. Now, I've never driven a pickup with a 10 foot trailer, never mind a dump truck with a small landing strip hooked to it. Terrifying is not the word for it. Backing the SOB up into my driveway took me over 30 minutes. My driveway is all of 15 feet long.
So.
I took Friday off. The big day that has been 10 years in the making. And it's raining. I load up the car and cover it with my indoor car cover. That'll have to do. I didn't tie the cover on. That was a mistake.
Anyway, I made the 45 minute trip to the DMV in Wethersfield driving this monstrosity uneventfully, although when I got there I was a nervous wreck.
One of the assistant inspectors had previously owned two ERA's and he immediately adopted me as his new best friend. Thank God for him, or the day would have been even worse than it turned out.
Ok, time for the lift. I have an under car exhaust, and their lift had quite a steep angle of attack. Needless to say, my muffler got hung up on the lift. We had to jack up the front of the car to get it down off the lift, fortunately with just a few scrapes.
I guess that was kind of a blessing though, because the chief inspector deferred the under car inspection with a little urging from my new best friend. Then they gave me a hard time about the front anti-roll bar mounting points being below the "scrub line" of the car. Again, my patron saint to the rescue.
And then the fiasco about parts. Aftermarket parts don't have unique identifying serial numbers! And if they do, good luck finding them. I'm like "here's the receipts, I bought the goddamn stuff!" My new best friend to the rescue again.
So why did I fail?
Seat belts. Yes, you read that correctly. Seat belts.
Kirkham's belts are labels as SFI 16.1 certified, but not DOT FMVSS 209 compliant. My seat belts aren't street legal. There was no sweet talking my way out of this one. They had given me all the breaks they were going to give me.
The irony is that my car is meticulously assembled. It's perfect. Ok, it leaks a bit of
oil from the rear main, but that's a design feature. And I failed for seat belts.
I guess I'll call ERA in New Britain, CT to see if they have a suggestion. I've started looking at seatbelt websites, but if someone has a good idea, I'm all ears.
On the plus side, I made it home without wrecking the car or causing a massive accident. So that's a win I guess
