What would you give these cars tickets for?
 

this is taken from a "favorite EK" thread on Honda-Tech, and it got me thinking, building a car like this in Ontario would just give you hella headaches. so let's hear it, what would the police give these cars tickets for? what part of the HTA would you cite? assume these cars pass Ontario emissions (since they have to pass CARB in California anyways). just upsetting that we can't have anything nice around here :tsk: without the police reaching in our pockets for 'their share'

haha B. let the war begin

well what got me thinking was that one 'improper exhaust' that was said to be 'straight through'. no **** einstein, they're all straight through, even the one hangin off the back of your police interceptor. unless you shoved about 10-12 feet of probe into an exhaust system you shouldn't come up on blockage (the cat is the only spot the probe should stop). or if the muffler was a flowmaster w/ baffles instead of perforated tube and fiberglass fill.

and also, WTF is 'too low'. by the definition that I've heard previously, most new showroom stock cars fail the test.

those cars are too low to survive here....theres potholes everywhere....a cop might pull them over for the wheels rubbing the well...even though they probably dont.....probably for having a loud exhaust and thats all i can think of....

you ever here of just tapping on the CAT and if its a hollow sounds then obviously its straight through? Thats how a lot of MTO and cops here check and give you a special meeting with the MTO.
I'd give a coupel tickets for ugly ass stickers....
but I also wouldn't drive them beacuse I liek the stock look

shouldn't the owner worry about his 'car surviving' as you put it? it's not as though the city pays for my car maintenance. (although maybe they should given how crusty the roads are, but that's another topic altogether)

what's considered a 'loud' exhaust. is there an objective measure, and if so are cops equipped with measuring devices that can replicate the test at the owner's request? a cop can't just eyeball a speeding car and say 'he's doing 112!', by the same token he can't look at a car and say... that sounds too loud!

a cat has heat shields around it. you can't tap the heat shields and determine that the cat is hollow. think before you post, k?

if this really is how they do it, I'd like to have one of these cops come to my house and help me locate studs, plumbing, and electrical in my walls. such 'sonar' hearing is rare and unique talent. :shocked:

also, before the next person posts... please think to yourself... what can i add to this discussion. am i a cop? or am I just talking out of my ass?

kthx

no plates on the front of the car for some lol unno if that counts

Front license plates missing on some.

On others, several in fact, no amber passive reflectors on the front corner markers as per Transport Canada regulations. Amber bulbs in the running lights/turn signals are a completely separate issue from having the required amber passive reflectors.

Probable tire-to-bodywork clearance issues on a couple of them, though most seem ok in that limited aspect from the photos.

Where many look like they'll flunk the grade is in their ride height. Your car should have no body or steering parts touching the ground even if you were to dismount all the tires leaving the car sitting on its rims. If you car is lower than that, you're seriously screwed if you have a flat.

ok the tire to bodywork thing I don't buy... if the guy can 10 days of driving w/o the tire blowing, there is no tire to bodywork issues... and no one in their right mind would build a car such that he'd have to buy new tires every 10 days. so i'm sure tire to bodywork isn't a problem

the front plate and the amber reflector... ok I don't like the law, but it is the law.

i actually kinda like the last point. that's somewhat of a valid point but how do you test that? how can an officer on the side of the road say whether a flat would be a problem. also, the explorers that flipped if they had a flat... did you guys give out tickets to all explorer drivers because their cars were unsafe for the rest of us? what about if I had bigger rims... more rim, less tire... how would you make an issue out of that?

anyways, I'd only require a mere 3.6 inches of ground clearance even if I was to drive on a rim, even less on a 17 inch rim. that's not a problem for most of these cars.

here is what i mean... notice it's not a problem for a car that looks really really low

I don't know about that. I've seen more than a few quite willing to live with cuts to their tire sidewalls and grinding on their tire edges from being in contact with the bodywork. If your tire can make contact with sheet metal or frame, even if at full steering lock and/or at the limits of suspension travel, then therein lies an argument for calling that an unsafe vehicle. If you have cut marks or grind marks on your tires, same goes.

You might be able to mask the effects of inadequate tire clearance by driving super slow over bumps, never going full steering lock, or by going on a diet and never carrying passengers, but those practices still do not make an unsafe car safe.

There is also the practical effects of lowering your car. When you do so, you also need to take into account spring rates and suspension travel so you're not scraping the ground at the limits of suspension travel. The route many go is to limit suspension travel and stiffen the shock rates. Take that to extremes though, and now you have a car that will "bounce" unpredictably on even minor bumps.

Everything you do to your car is a tradeoff. Looking good is one thing, but the car still has to be safe and usable on the roads that we have to deal with here in Ontario.


The problems with the Explorers occurred as a result of the factory putting inadequate tires on the thing. There was not enough margin for load carrying capacity built into the tire versus potential vehicle weight to allow for anything other than operation at optimal tire pressures.

Throw in the fact that most people tend to neglect tire pressure even more than they neglect engine oil levels, and you had a recipe promoting catastrophic tire failure. That, combined with the higher center of gravity characteristic of SUVs in general, plus the relatively narrow wheelbase of the Explorer of that time, led to the inevitable - more frequent rollovers when tires failed.

Ford addressed the tire capacity issue with recalls. There would be nothing for a cop to lay charges over even before the recall as long as the tires were in decent shape.

A cop can look at your ride height easily enough at roadside. The HTA also lets him inspect the roadworthiness of the vehicle in whatever way he feels is expedient, and the HTA requires you to help. If there is any question, you could be looking at a tow, or you could be looking at presenting your car for inspection at MTO safety lanes set up expressly for the purpose of determining roadworthiness, just like they did up in Newmarket, down in Kitchener, in Toronto, etc etc last year.


More rim/less tire means harsher ride. Lower aspect tires cost more, damage rims and blow out more easily on bumps, and shake your car to all hell causing greatly accelerated wear on your suspension and steering components. It also makes for a very uncomfortable ride on any but the absolute smoothest roads.

On out typical roads, lower aspect tires actually decrease available traction. They just don't have the "give" to be able to conform to uneven road surfaces.

Go low enough and you are effectively riding on rims as far as driving comfort and traction on uneven roads goes. The cop won't need to charge you for the tires - he'll just wait until you ditch is when you hit that unexpected section of washboard road, or your steering breaks, or your tire or rims blow up on that unexpected pothole.


If it means that you have to almost stop on the street in order to be able clear the curb to enter a driveway, the cop may nail you for impeding the flow of traffic.

Your car not only has to be safe, it also has to permit you to operate it in a way that does not cause undue interference with the flow of other traffic.

It's also not a problem for a cop to measure that at roadside with a tape measure, or even just a mark on a piece of paper.

are you retarded... a cat has other material in it as well. when you tap on a stock cat it wont sound hollow.... tap on one with fake shield or that has been gutted and it will sound hollow. I've done it. I also said they do this a do a formal check later.
Now STFU and go read about it and maybe you wont come back with such a dumbass response as per usual

Watchout Bruno, kingjames is on a rampage! He'll beat you over the head with a hollowed cat if you post such nonsense again.

king....you really wanna get kicked out of this forum eh. watch your language or else you will have a banned stamp engraved on your behind permanently.

better?

ok so you're stupider than your post initially indicated. thanks for pointing that out.

:focus:

FiveO you bring up pretty decent points. Not all of it is correct, but good stuff to think about. For example, 3.6 inches of clearance is plenty to clear driveways and bumps. The imaginary plain that extends from the point where the wheels touch the ground to the front and rear overhang (depending on angle and wheelbase) adequately covers most reasonable approaches. You are imagining a single point of 3.6 inches in height, whereas I'm talking about a complete plain that extends from topographical differential in the road.

The problems with the Explorer were far more involved than a tire recall. Firestone had a campaign (which I agree with) that in case of a blowout you should pull over, not ROLL over. The roll overs were a problem with poor suspension design and an extremely high center of gravity resulting from susp geometry. For comfort reasons Ford recommended tire pressures at the lowest acceptable limit by Firestone, and as you pointed out most ppl don't watch their pressures adequately. This caused the tire blowouts, but a tire blowout on other vehicles wouldn't cause a roll over. Only on the Explorer. Therefore, all Exporers on the road were endangering the public.

As for rejects with rubbing tires... yes, I guess it's possible. I appologize for the existance of such 'enthusiasts'... hopefully one day Darwin's law will have eliminated them. They make us all look bad.

Your analysis of the practicality of lowered suspensions is misguided. It's true some do it wrong, but it's no worse than all the other neglected vehicles. Every 99-04 VW golf/jetta/NB out there is riding around on blown shocks, yet they don't get tickets for it. In any case, it should be on the owner or manufacturer to determine the adequacy of our vehicles, not the police. In Ontario we pass a single 'safety' test and the rest of the time, maintenance is in our hands.

As for the bigger rim/smaller tire comment, I know the tradeoffs. I was pointing out the incentive structure for your rules to make people get ridiculous size rims.

I hope you don't see this as arguing just for the hell of it, I know you can't change the law, only enforce it. I just wanna better understand how you justify this to yourself. I don't want to spend $20-30K building a car that I'll never enjoy driving cuz my eyes will be scanning for the police rather than watching the road. Case in point, my car has been parked for almost 5 years now (since around 2003), and I would have never built it had I originally lived in Toronto.

^ great arguement... typical from you