ilegal Modifications, can we get them legal?

[alfaromeo2.0]

is there a way to homolgate car Modifications that are ilegal by the trafic laws?

how does it works?

thanks

[waynne]

You are stuck with the laws of your country unfortunately. Sometimes you can register a car in a modification friendly country and get round it that way but in most cases you will still have to get the registration of the car transferred to your home country at some point. We have a member in Belgium with a Hummer and he is having similar problems so he is going to get the car registered in the UK and is hoping that it is easier for him to transfer to another country within the EU.

[alfaromeo2.0]

i heard that for exemple spain, you order a bodykit (for exemple) and you only get it after the company that sells it gets it legal to put in the car.

isnt there a gouvernement identity that allows (or not) the Modifications?

[waynne]

In the UK we have BS and EC type approval (I think) which is probably what you are asking. Most products will need crash, noise and other tests to be fully approved. We are quite lucky over here that we can pretty much do most things to our car and it is down to the discresion of the MOT tester at the annual inspection wether it passes the regs or not.

[alfaromeo2.0]

you mean that you can mod (with approved) stuff and is the tester who will say if its ok or not?

sounds nice

[waynne]

Pretty much. There are rules for example if exhaust noise is considered excessive it fails - but the tester decides for himself what is excessive. There are plans to make it harder to modify our cars here though

[vr1066]

My cousin nearly got issued with an ASBO for his exhaust.

He got pulled and had no road tax plus another few Modifications that the law didn't like. They gave him 7 days to fix it all or they would impound his car.

I was glad about the exhaust cause it didn't sound very good.