[V8] My interesting adventure at motor vehicle inspection with the V8

[George Tur]

Well I had to take the V8 in for the New Jersey biannual motor vehicle 
inspection. I've been dreading this since the beast has been burning through 
a quart of oil every couple of hundred miles. I figured every alarm would go 
off on the emissions machine when they ran that test. But, lo and behold the 
beast passed the emissions even though it was blowing oil smoke at every stop 
light. What they failed the beast on was non DOT stamped parking and tail 
light assemblies. WTF, I asked the guy, is this about? Two years ago I passed 
the inspection with the same light assemblies, these are the tinted ones from 
Bruce at AudiConnection. The guy tells me that they now check any lenses that 
look like they are aftermarket to see if they are stamped as DOT approved. If 
they don't have a DOT or SAE stamp on them then they aren't acceptable in New 
Jersey.  Well now I have to dig out the old parking and tail light assemblies 
and swap them in. I guess they feel I need the non tinted lights in order for 
everyone to see me through the cloud of smoke. :-)

On another note. After failing the test I stopped off on the way home to jaw a 
little with the mechanic at the local shop. While we're talking about the 
kids and life in general I see that they have a 1996 BMW 740IL sitting there 
that is up for sale. I'm not really that interested in it, but what the heck, 
I took it for a test drive and was really impressed. It's very smooth and the 
acceleration is very strong. Surprisingly the car didn't feel like a barge 
when taking it through some turns at speed, or no more than the V8. The front 
seats show wear, but aren't torn or split, and a few other pieces of interior 
trim need replacement, but the interior was pretty good. There is a small 
dent on the trunk, as if something fell on it, and some oxidation along the 
edge of the trunk lid, otherwise the body and paint looked pretty good.

According to the mechanic the car had been brought in for a blown head gasket 
but when the owner was given a price on the work he said he wasn't interested 
in spending that sort of money on it. The shop then bought it off him, did 
the head gasket and rebuilt the heads. The car has 112k miles on it and 
according to the shop all the electrical and electronics work, there are no 
leaks and the suspension and brakes were recently done. I didn't check 
everything out on the car but it does look interesting. 

Do you think I'll be triple cursed if I have both the Audi and BMW gods 
watching over me?

George 

with the smoking V8