not everyone can build a safe hot rod ,,,

I'm sure they're ALLOWED to use proper punctuation and capitalization... they just choose to waive that right.

I'm sure it's not... especially when you're refering to a demographic of people that (statistically speaking, of course) has a high percentage of high school dropouts. I'm not speaking ill of anyone... I'm just stating a fact.

There shouldn't be an apostrophe in 'Auto Techs' and you misspelled 'grammar.'

Technically 'ok' should be spelled 'okay' but I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get away with it.

 

now all of that was funny!!

 

The bigger the glob, the better the job.

 

What if it can't do 65?

(I know I know, then it "ain't" a hot rod)

 

why is it ok at all for anyone to turn out an unsafe rod? Pro-shop, Home builder it doesn't matter. when the car crashes because of some asinine failure will it matter who did the work. only to the lawyers trying the inevitable court case.
It isn't hard to build it safe. Just build it right, and if you cannot, find a way to learn. Thats one of the reasons this site is here right?

ok I am climbing down from my soap box...

 

And unfortunately I can vouch for that from first hand experience - what a bunch of incompetent pricks. Are they still in business?

 

tanks for splainin that had me a little cornfused

 

Dont talk about my momma....

......and definately dont talk about my gramma !!!!!!

btw

to - for a purpose

too - also, as well

two - the number



as far as rod safety, yeah....we must have ours inspected by a Government Certified Automotive Engineer, based on a very clear set of rules/laws in Australia.
It forces us all to build cars to a certain minimum, but at least you never have to 'make the call' on whats ok and what isnt, and you never have to hear about it from some holier-than-though-been-building-em-for-78-years.......all of our old guys just talk about how to make them go faster/stop/handle better...WITHIN the rules!

fender laws still suck though!!!!

 

Hot rodders are not the only people to fabricate up some really scary shit.
Some of the off road guys can be frighteningly creative too.

http://128.83.80.193/scarysteering/scarysteering3.html
http://128.83.80.193/scarysteering/index.html
http://128.83.80.193/scarysteering/scarysteering6.html

 

How do they handle the cars purchased from the states and completed?

 

Depends what you want to do with the car.

For shows and drag racing it can be trailered everywhere, no road registration is required.

You can get club registration, but it would almost certainly need at least to first be converted to right hand drive, have fenders fitted, and comply with a great many other required features. That enables you to drive it to club events only, hot rod shows, and other special events. It is NOT full road registration, the car cannot be a daily driver.

Full road registration requires the car to be engineered by an approved engineer. That means the engineer needs to see and approve every stage of construction. He cannot do that with a fully completed car.

For instance, the chassis would require stripping and sand blasted back to bare metal so the engineer can inspect every weld, and recommend any structural strengthening, design changes, or or required (steering) geometry changes.
It will also have to be converted to right hand drive, have dual circuit brakes, and meet a host of other Australian minimum requirements, including wheel rim widths, and noise.

Many highly stressed parts are not allowed to be chrome plated. So an imported fully chromed show rod would probably require many chromed parts to be discarded and replaced.

In other words the car needs to be completely stripped and rebuilt from scratch, so that the engineer can inspect every stage of construction before he signs his name to accept full personal legal responsibility for the safety of your rod.

So in other words, importing an already fully built hot rod from overseas is no cheap and easy way to get a fully road registered hot rod in Australia.
It is still going to be a hell of a lot of time and money to get it fully engineered and up to the required standard.

 

ya know that is where "rat rods" got the "bad rep" they have.....I'm not afraid to admit it I have a Rat Rod and ya know what.....It's safely built, It is done 60's style. Zee'd the frame, has a lil 350 in it, it has pie crust cheeter slicks, chopped top, It is a friggin Traditional Hot Rod just doesn't have a fancy paint job on it.....So what I can wash my rod with a brillo pad and not worry about scratching it. It's done tastefully and safely....thats what counts...

Now as for the original post.....Ya I agree there are a hell of alot of hacks out there that are not safe...rubber fuel line next to the exhaust is just asking for problems. Socket swivles for steering ujoints is plain stupid spend a few bucks and do it right instead of whatever works.

 

not to mention you dont want to get sued.

 

Good grief..go through all that to build a car and impress someone? I though Australia was the land of the free and home of the brave?
I wouldn't last 20 minutes and they would want to ship me off to some island.

 

{Its amazing what I find on the internet forums.
Some people can't construct a paragraph or even a sentence.
Some guys are not allowed to use proper punctuation or capitalization}


But in all that ..we still got it. This is'nt school...we don't grade each other. Get over yourself

 

Trust me to have a Proudhonian mutualist analysis, but it seems there's a world of difference between simple standards designed to help you to stay safe and a hulking structure of regulation designed to convince you that it's too much trouble to do it yourself and rather to go for a brand-new stocker from the established motor industry. It's all about maintaining those critical levels of production volume ...

 

It's not that we a grading each other....and we aren't about ourselves....It's call build it safe!!! And examples how not to build.

 

It may be the land of the free, but we don't like chassis held together with bondo, or crazy home made suspensions that will probably break, or that can suddenly send you out of control without warning.

Blown big block rods with bicycle wheels on the front, and no front brakes may look cool. but it ain't going to get you full road registration here in Australia.

It just means building a vehicle that is both safe and mechanically sound. Is that really such a bad thing ?

 

It's scary to think that someone was driving that piece of shit.

 

This engineer that 'signs-off' on your chassis must be some sort of P.E. and licensed to do so, right? What are they, structural engineers? What makes them so special that they know all the phases of building a hot rod? I've been building this shit for many years, decades actually, from 200+mph drag cars to magizine and show winning hot rods and i wouldn't presume to pretend i know it all. That is the height of arrogance. I expect your engineer and I and my American peers would have a problem. Can you imagine some kid fresh out of podunk tech school telling you what to do? There probably isn't a car in America that would pass that kind of scrutiny, the least little metal fatigue or crack around a bolt hole would fail it on the spot because there isn't an engineer in the whole world would sign off on anything that would jepordize is professional license. That is the real problem, his priority is to maintain his professional accreditation and could care less about what you are building and will spec that it must be built to the highest of many possible standards. After all, it isn't his wallet is it? And who is to say that it is consrtucted any safer, if a grade 5 bolt is sufficient then grade 8 cannot make it stronger - but grade 8 is a higher possible standard. In engineering speak, 'it is wasteful and unnecessary to build to greater than the minimum possible standards, however, it is unacceptable to build to less than the minimum' Inspectors have that rule in reverse. My .02, oj

 

there's nothing wrong with ensuring a car is safe and mechanically sound, but the extent to which the aussie gov't goes is a bit contrived and excessive. it sounds like the standards they require for hot rods and customs are higher than the standards they have for factory built cars.
me thinks ned ludd is right, this looks like a ploy to get folks to buy new cars.
what about the factory built cars that have gone to shit and aren't safe? do they have an engineer go over those to ensure they're safe and mechanically sound as well? who's resposible then if it isn't and it still goes out on the road and kills or injures someone?

 

Yup!! Lots of cars are built, but few are engineered. I helped a friend rebuild a 32 Pontiac Coupe that had been rodded in the 70's. The only part off of the chassis that we reused was the panard rod for the rear end. Everything else we cut off and started again. No wonder the car burnt in it's day!!

The Old Tinbasher

 

Here is another one for the scary steering pile. I pulled this out of a customers OT 4x4. I am not sure how he even got to my shop without killing himself or anyone else. There are three points of flex in there, and a collapsible section too. No support bearing. This was done by a "shop". My replacement is shown below it.


Yikes! I might be a two-bit metal hack, but my shit is safe.

 

Ummmmm.....No.

The Engineer's concern is SAFETY.
They are trained Automotive Engineers who have gathered experience before being selected to represent the government (thus Certified).

After the Engineer gives you his certificate for any Modifications, as long as the car is not changed again.......both the Local traffic Cops AND the Government registration board cant touch you!!!!!!!

These Engineers are for the most part open-minded and not interested in reducing custom vehicles......they advise on build aspects BEFORE you build it and check it again BEFORE you start driving it.

This system simply ensures that Someone who knows what the hell they're looking at checks every car BEFORE it goes out on the road with MY Family.

Check out some of the Aussie show threads, and look at how wild some of the Registered (standard licence plates/tags) cars are......passed by the Engineers......cops cant touch them!

After an accident, nobody can say its automatically the unsafe hot rods fault, and sue you through the ass !

It aint all bad!

Try thinkin about it from a different angle.

 

Ummmm....No.

The Engineer actually inspects and passes your car so that you DON'T have to do all the Crash Testing / EPA / Gas Consumption / Wind tunnel testing etc that the OEMs have to.

One of the Dozen (Approx) Government Certified Engineers check the DESIGN.

Local Mechanics do a RWC (Roadworthiness Certificate) to check CONDITION of components.

 

Took the words right outta my mouth (sorry, just heard Meatloaf on the radio ).

And, if these engineers were as anal as OJ suggested, nothing would ever pass, so no one would bother to build cars...and the engineers would be out of a job!

 

I actually agree - up to a point. It's far better than some places where there's the OEM way or none at all. Theoretically we've got something similar here in South Africa. If you don't have type approval you need a Letter of Authority from the SA Bureau of Standards, for which they'll do a fairly thorough inspection of the vehicle. There's no process set up specifically for hot rods, though. I'll see if it works one of these days. At least the SABS person will be an engineer or a scientist rather than a bureaucrat or cop, so hopefully there's scope for talking things through.

I work with engineers all the time in the building industry and for the most part they're cool to work with. The key - in my professional situation - is to involve an engineer early and spend some time brainstorming. Engineers are creative too, more often than not they appreciate the opportunity to take part in the design process. It might be worth my while to make some time to pick an SABS engineer's brain.

But, having said that, there's a philosophical question around society's relatively newfound obsession with safety, predictability, and immortality; though I'm not sure if this is the place to investigate it.

 

People are slapping these cars together for profit ,Not to keep ,The funniest thing is they are getting it.I scratch build all my cars and safety is my no 1 concern and after that is fit and function.Alot of guys disagreed with my shifter I built out of a nut and a bolt ,But im putting a stiffer spring in trans .and also has a neutral safety to start only in park .Just no reverse lockout ,Im planning to drive ,Not bang gears. This rod will never be for sale until Im gone.

 

this was a great response, as was rod powells !!! why on gods green earth would the grammar in a pretty good post even be called into question? man oh man i wish that was one of my biggest concerns! WTF

ps it would be impossible for me to care less if any of my spelling, or punctuation is correct SO DONT GO THERE! im here to help, and learn as much as i can. why the fuck does evrything have to end up in drama or a ratrod debate? its really starting to take the fun out of it.. and here i am adding to it. sorry.. dave

 

Perhaps that system can work in your country, but i do work with engineers that certify chassis. For the drag cars we have standards for safety set for chassis fabrication by SFI, these standards are precise. They spell out exactly what size tubing, wall thickness, tubing materials and mil spec. They tell us what welding technique. They give you blue prints that must be followed, the blue prints may or maynot have options but you must chose one set of approved plans and adhere to that plan. After construction i hire one of these chassis inspectors to come to the shop and they analize each weld, the welds must be raw 'as is' no grinding so the inspector can see the heat in the adjacent area around the weld, they measure each and every piece of tubing, they sonic test the wall thickness, they measure distances from specific points. When they are satisfied they certify your chassis, give it a serial number that we weld to the chassis with a manufactors' tag so that every year after the chassis gets recertified and tracked. Guess what, after all this precision and exactitude the inspector will still bellyache about something! The trick is to know what your inspector looks for and pay extraspecial attention to that particular detail, will that make it any safer? No, it is just being smart.
Imagine what it could be like if there wasn't a particular set of plans that both inspector and fabricator have to follow. Down under the inspectors might be great guys that will actually try to help you, over here it would a test of wills and the process would be subjective to the whim of the inspector. That system just scares the shit out of me. We have regular safety inspections here for our daily drivers and if we choose we can take the hot rod thru it. If it passes that simple inspection then you'd feel more confident. Truth be known, most wouldn't pass that simple exam.