Send this to all the Aussie regulators
 

To all my Aussie mates who lament the over regualted state laws;

Extract: Cobra makers, rejoice! You no longer have to meet Federal safety standards! In addition to all that stuff about rebuilding highway bridges and paving over potholes, a provision of the just-passed Motor Vehicle Safety Act exempts low-volume carmakers from crash-test standards. That means no more expensive finite element analysis and high-speed scientific crash testing. Just create the shape you want -- usually a ’65 Cobra or a ’32 Ford -- slap an engine in it and voila, you’re a carmaker, albeit a low-volume one.

Full article Small-volume carmakers get a big break in Motor Vehicle Safety Act | Autoweek

Cameron

Good news for the cobra and kit car community.

Read the article and the following extract i dont understand, how Ford doesn't have a compliant motor?

Not all those challenges are covered in the new bill. Engines powering the cars still have to meet emissions, which at the moment means using GM engines.

“The biggest limitation I see in the near-term, is the fact that there is only one class of engines available from General Motors that will be compliant with this law,” said Ward. “All of us in this community are hoping that Ford, Mopar and others will follow suit, developing crate- and emissions-certified engines to enhance our options.”

Could someone explain the differences.
Cheers
Jon

Read more: Small-volume carmakers get a big break in Motor Vehicle Safety Act | Autoweek

Simple, they don't have a crate engine that's emissions certified 'out of the box'. That would include the engine, EFI, engine management system, etc., as a complete package. It's probably relatively simple to make it happen but, as to whether they want to spend the money for a relatively small volume, that's another question. Perhaps on the 'halo car' effect and the Ford 'brand' they'll make the investment.

I'm not following your logic. Why would "Aussie regulators" take any notice of this? :confused:

Cheers,
Glen

They wouldnt follow.. we have none as of 18 months from now.. !

To meet the AU regs the engine needs to be certified to AU emissions standards AND have an engine number within a range that is registered by the manufacturer with the RTA.

Low volume manufacturers in Australia need to produce more than 5 identical cars per year.

Most of us build ICVs, which are never considered fully compliant and hence given specific legislation to allow them to be registered.

This link is showing us nothing we don't already have, and our system is easier than overseas. Germany won't let you build a kit car and not will Italy.

Treeve

so are all these cars that were at the European Cobra meeting in Germany in 2013 (including Italian cars) low volume......no they weren't!

[IMG]http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/d...M_2013_195.jpg[/IMG]



[IMG]http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/d...M_2013_131.jpg[/IMG]

Greg perhaps they were brought into the country ... rather than built in the country? ?

some yes, some no....i spoke at length to one italian guy with a monstrous supercharged LSX that he fitted during his build

maybe i missed the subtleties over origin lost in the translation!

Robnell built low volume compliance cars in the 1990s! They met emission requirements with a motec ecu and fuel injection.
I believe they had problems with the 4.6 ford motors in meeting requirements???? Some say (Clarkson) the testing of these motors was subject to debate and the equipment was designed for truck emissions testing, NOT CARS. It was certainly the case in SA and the testing was farmed out to outside workshops. Strangely the same outside equipment that is now used was not considered acceptable for testing results when the truck designed testing equipment was in use.
No new ground breaking revelations here!

I just read this on HotRod magazine The compliance regulation was for turn key cars built by kit car and replica manufacturers. They can use late model engines with all pollution gear attached...as well as earlier model engines that meet that years emission standards. sound familiar ?

NSW has recently increased the level of scrutiny for ICV's considerably.. see this thread...

http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/aust...ts-nsw-au.html

Chris....
I thought you understood that they didn't change anything???...you or your engineer seemed to get it all wrong...
All that other thread seemed to show was that you had the wrong guy ....
Maybe I missed something ??

hi Wazza...

Is why I started the other thread.. to further clarify or get an opinion on what the implications are.. as its bloody difficult to continue to build if the goal posts are moving.

My understanding is that technically the regs stay the same, but the inspection process and jurisdiction of the Certifying Engineer has been turned on its head.

Mandatory detailed inspections of ALL ICV's by the RMS are now required until further notice.

I'd already raised the example of a Willwood brake master V a 'hot rod' style unit which is missing the same certification marks or testing and is not used in any AU compliant production vehicle.

The 'hot rod' unit would apparently fail immediately, but Willwood would be more likely to pass. I really dont understand the difference when the test is about pedal pressure and brake system performance.

Same deal on the beam and test data.. I have a set from the same vehicle type from the same manufacturer. The engineer had previously accepted calcs on the chassis mods I performed as meeting or exceeding the test results I paid for at the time. Now this data is apparently totally unacceptable and a unique test will be required.

Ive also been advised they will be looking for weld strength calcs for evey critical component / system and anchorage point as well as doing xrays of chassis parts to verify weld integrity.

To be frank it does seem a bit a$$ about, punish the builders because of failures by a minority of the RMS appointed Engineers.

I have sent a list of data and components to my engineer for review and advise re those which require compliance data or testing, as yet I'm awaiting his reply to assess further.

Look forward to any further thoughts or advice.. as far as I can see I am missing something.. but Im not sure what it is.. !

Cheers

Chris

Yeah I'm not sure what you've been told is actually correct, or if your certifier believes that it is then I'm not sure he's arguing his case strongly enough.

You should also ask if he's a certifier or a qualified engineer, because if he's not also an engineer then you could be paying someone else to do a lot of the calculations, as he technically isn't legally allowed to do them, even if he owns the textbooks and can drive a calculator.

Treeve