Just a thought thats been eating on me for a while -
I was reading a Paint & Body mag and the writer mentioned that HOBBIEST could buy the older paints that the body shops couldn't use any more. This got me to thinking, What other Government regulations are Hobbiest exempt from? Who knows? The government isn't going to volunteer the information. Maybe there is a waver or form you can fill out so that you can modify your car any way you want.
Maybe some people need to write some letters to get some laws changed - It slays me to see some dude on a murdercycle sail by w/ no helmet while I sit in a 3600 lb steel cage (w/ airbags yet!) and I could get a ticket fer not wearing a seat belt. How did this happen - (in my state) the bikers got the law changed.
Let'me say that I'm for clean air - I'm for electric cars & new technology - but I'm also for Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness. And if work'n on your ride & cruising th' Ave. ain't Happiness I don't know what is.

 

Some State governments and of course the Imperial Federal Government pride themselves on how intrusive they can be into your life. Most of the laws that are enforced with regularity are laws that are designed to protect you from yourself. The original intent of the founding fathers is that the government protect you from me and me from you. That is what laws should be for. Like you, I am alarmed by how many laws there are that we must deal with, which have no purpose other than to be a nuisance, and to keep the idiots of the world from hurting themselves. That isn't freedom!

As far as paint, I don't know. But I do know that the some of the reasons that the automakers do some of what we think are the craziest and stupidest things, is because they are complying with some stupid Government regulation. New cars are regulated on the following: Safety, pollution (both during manufacture and while in use), noise (yes, new cars can only be so loud), CAFE (Corporat Average Fuel Economy), safety equipment, and probably several more that I have forgotten about. Some states have outlawed certain kinds of paints. You can get them, but you are not supposed to use them in that state. The real reason the body shop can't is that they would get caught while you doing this in your garage, probably wouldn't.

I do know that here in Southern Middle Tennessee, there are no smog checks and fewer regulations than most places. I am pretty lucky about that.

 

I was over a friend's friend's house, and someone in that guys house belonged to greenpeace or something similar. There was a newsletter on the table, and I was waiting for the both of them, so I started reading it. It had a picture of an old 3-window with flames on the fenders... guess what the article was about? Emissions legislation in california. Know what pissed me off? The article had not one gdamn thing to do with old hot rods!! It talked about trying to force auto makers to reduce emissions in new cars for 2005 or 2010 or something!

What pissed me off was the fact that even though they're talking about new cars, they need to put an old hot rod as the picture. That re-inforces everyone's incorrect assumption that these dirty filthy hot rods are ruining the earth... never mind three things:

1. A hot rod in that good of a shape is probably running cleaner and using less gas than a new Ford Excursion SUV.
2. I betchya that most old hot rods are not daily drivers.
3. Compare the # of hot rods on the road to the # of big oversized V8 powered gas guzzling SUV's, and I'll wager money that there are more of the SUV's on the road.

And I betchya there are members of that newsletter club that own SUV's, but "hate hot rods" because they pollute. Why don't people look under their own g-damn noses? ARGH! Get those hot rods! Never mind the Lexus SUV in the driveway, there goes a perfectly restored '67 Camaro, lets crush it! Stupid people- they're the ones ruining the damn environment, and blaming it on our hobby.

They want SUV's, Fine. Buy 6 cyl ones. I doubt any of these people use their V8 SUV to haul rocks or tow campers/heavy equipment- do they need a V8? Nope!

 

I once got into an argument with one of the stereotypical treehugger hippie types that unfortunately were drawn to my school. He was driving one of those old VW vans, spray painted with all types of crap, Grateful Dead stickers everywhere, and several bumper stickers with environmental messages, including one that said "Think Globally, ACT Locally". It was spewing so much smoke that it looked like it was on fire! I watched him park this pile, and asked him if he was at all serious about cleaning up the local environment. He got this real serious look on his face, and said yes.

"Well why don't you start by tuning up that piece of $hit!"

 

(laughs) I think I would've paid to see that!

 

^^^ditto on paying to see the look on the hippie's face when you told him that! I think that while these enviornmentalist are going WAY overboard, they do have a valid point. How many people do you know that try to build a hot rod and even give a second of thought to emissions? For that matter, how many of us think twice about speeding on the freeway or blowing away some other car at a stoplight, simply because we can and we like to? I'm not trying to start any flames or anything, but I think that we need to take responsibility for the side affects of our hobby. Tom's right that these gas guzzling SUVs are contributing more to pollution that hot rodded cars are, I know, my mom has a Ford Explorer and it goes through gas like nothing else (and it's a six cyl. to boot). But that doesn't excempt us from taking responsibility too. There are things that we can do, but we don't want to do them because it may cost us a tenth of a second here, or a couple HP there. I think that if we started trying to make our cars with lower emissions that people may start realizing that it's they're Ford Expeditions and poorly maintained VWs that are causing all the trouble. That's just my $.02

 

A few pseudo-scientific points...
(1) One large volcanic eruption spews out more carbon monoxide and ozone depleting chemical compounds than all of man's industrialized activites combined! How many thousands of those have happened since the dawn of time? The earth is not nearly as fragile as these folks claim.

(2)A good running car WITHOUT smog equipment creates far less pollutants than a fully smog laden car with any type of problem. The catalytic converter operates in a narrow window of fuel/air mix to help reduce emissions. If the car is operated outside that window, then the converter is detrimental to emissions.

(3)If electric cars are the answer and are so clean, etc... Where are we going to get the extra electricity to charge the batteries from? California hasn't built a new power plant in a very long time, and they want to force automakers to sell electric cars? Coal burning power plants are not exactly clean, even with scrubbers. These same people rail against nuclear power, which has less environmental impact than other types.

The main gripe I have is that it isn't anyone's business what type of vehicle I choose to drive, Especially not the imperial federal government. These groups all have an agenda, and if you notice, all of their solutions have at their base a larger, more intrusive government body telling all of us imbeciles how we have to live. I agree that we do NOT need to intentionally pollute anything, but many of the things that we do that the Enviro Wackos frown on is not hurting things. Most cars over 20 years old are NOT daily drivers, just like you said.

 

Never knew about #1! That's wild! Here's something else "fun"- did you know trees release hydrocarbons into the atmosphere? Should trees be smog-checked?

I was down in Disney back in '95, and went to Epcot. They had some kind of "future" exhibit, and showed an electric car. The lady said in the beginning "when I'm done I'll take questions". I had one to ask... she finished her speech, and said "I'll take questions now..."- before she finished, I raised my hand right away, and the end of her sentence was "...so if you have a question, please come up to the stage". She then put the mike down, and walked down the side of the stage. Dammit. I left- nobody would've heard my question. My question? It would've been "how does that car stand up to a 15 mph head-on collision with a 2 ton steel car?" (sigh) Granted it was a concept car, she kept talking about how light it was, but any collision- even with another plasticar- and I think the driver would've been seriously injured. I also wonder what we'll do with all the dead batteries. Anyone get Motor magazine? They had an article on servicing electric cars.. pretty interesting. The car has an electric cut-off switch in the trunk that you turn off and keep the special key in your pocket so (a) you can't get fried and (b) nobody else can turn the power back on without you knowing.

And yah, in the 70's, the automakers didn't know what they were doing with emissions... to fix smog, they bolted things on, instead of tuning the motor (ex: those inpenetrable catalytic convertors). At least they wised up now. Supposedly, according to a Hot Rod test, a high flow cat compared to a new, out-of-the-box off-the-dealer's-shelf GM cat, doesn't flow much more. It was a test with a big block chevy... they ran a high-flow cat, a GM cat, and no cat, and checked HP and emissions. The GM cat dropped HP by 1 or 2, but lowered emissions over twice what the high-flow one did! (No-cat did farily well on the emissions, too, because the motor was so tuned up with a friendly cam.) Motto? If you can't pass emissions with your high-flow cat, bolt a new $300 GM cat on- at least it'll save you from the crusher.

[edit]If you want to check that article out, go to http://www.motor.com . On the top of the page, click on Motor Magazine. Then click on Articles & Features, and click on "Yes, You Can Service Hybrid Vehicles - Tom Nash ". If you choose the PDF version you can see the pics.

 

Yeah, that #1 surprised me when I found out about it, too. A volcanic eruption can actually put enough pollutants and particles into the air to make the climate cooler around the globe for 1 to 2 years, and this has been recorded to have happend several times in the last 200-300 years. Did the climate stay cooler? No, it recovered.

There was a volcanic eruption back in the early 90's somewhere in Europe, and the report I read said that "the regional Ozone layer had been damaged, but that scientist expected it to be fully recovered in about 18 months." I couldn't believe it! Why had I not heard about the recovery of the ozone somewhere else, like TV? The honest truth is that the sun reacting with our upper atmosphere creates ozone. In order for us to destroy the ozone layer, we would have to block out the sun!

Next time any of you hear some talking head on TV or some enviro wacko talking about the Ozone layer and global warming etc... Know that is a bunch of B.S. with no true scientific evicence (other than pure computer modeling), and that these people have a leftist/statist agenda that they are pushing with this crap.

Hey TomP, I read that about the converters, too. The NEW high flow converters don't cost but a couple of horsepower on the average car.