Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hey Guys..

Have heard that by installing an Electronic Boost Controller, it is illegal for the roads - true or false ??

If true, does anyone know the reason ??

And would a bleeder also fit into this category ??

Im sure insurance would have a field day with this legality..

:nowigetit

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/35835-ebc-legalities-for-road/
Share on other sites

well i think it goes for all boost controllers, that they are illegal, well i know they are in VIC.....

Reason being is that your emmisions change as you change ur boost and the CPU and other stuff don't compensate for it to therefore ->richer the car, the more the exhaust and shit that comes out i guess. This reasoning is only from what i believe is the reason, just a guess. And the laws go nuts when it comes to emmisions just like aftermarket CPU's..

It's a little grey and may be 50/50 depending on the circumstances of your claim.

Insurance will "cover" you when you tell them of your a/m modifications (adding to your premium of course)... but technically speaking (vic) your car does not pass EPA, hence is not roadworthy... and if you have a look at the fine print of your insurance policy, it does not cover non road-worthy cars.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't ;)

Technically, ANY modification is illegal except for wheels that are 1 inch or less wider than stock...

Why? Because they change the car to the way that it passed ADR certification.

Technically, ANY modification is illegal except for wheels that are 1 inch or less wider than stock...

Why? Because they change the car to the way that it passed ADR certification.

You can make most mods legal... and it can be cheap or expensive depending.

You can make most mods legal... and it can be cheap or expensive depending.

Yeah, you can get the car inspected and granted an engineer's certificate, but that's not concrete proof to any inspecting police officers. You may have done modifications after the engineer's certificate was issued. Hence they can still defect you, and you will have to take it to court and prove otherwise.

i.e. If they want to screw you over, they'll find a way.

Yes, boost controllers are illegal. But i'm sure there are people out their having accidents and get their insurance claim accepted even with them on.

Depending on the state some modifications are legal.. in fact quite a few actually are as long as you follow the set guidelines. Different exhaust system, tinted windows, different ride height, different rims, different steering wheels, different intercooler, etc can all be perfectly legal -- at least speaking from VIC and QLD where I've lived. All seem to be fine based upon both what the local transport registration office says and even the EPA *without* an engineers, but I know plenty of cops that don't think that way. But the cops aren't the law, even though they often think they are. They're just the enforcers of the rules laid down by others. Pity they can't get them right half the time.

The QLD approach is reasonable -- least they have a brochure that actually says what is legal and what isn't. What is a "minor" modification, and what is a major (e.g. requiring engineers). See here:

http://www.transport.qld.gov.au/qt/driver....difications.pdf

Now if all states could follow this lead by simply producing a simple brochure, the understanding on the issue would be a damn site better. But considering VIC and NSW which rely on defect revenue, having the issue grey of course helps their agenda

My insurance company allows lots of modifications hence aftermarket turbo's, exhaust, boost controllers providing they are street legal.

Quite a stupid statement. Setting your self up for an instant denile if you claim and state you have a big turbo, ebc etc.

Oh well slap a heavy duty wastegate actuator on her and no one will know. Maybe even a bleeder to fine tune. In the case of an accident take the day off work and slap on the stock bits.

Its quite stupid really as people tend not to drive as stupid when they have a powerful car where as all these d*cks in there little buzz box's and commodores flyaround and hit things, kill people going fast around corners to try and make there car feel fast.

There should also be an age limit of say 25 where you are allowed to mod the car to your hearts content, providing it follows the epa laws. Make the test cheapish and there will be a high turn over.. more revenue. :) At least with the age limit we 'should' have a little more maturity not to fly around dangerously but rather to just enjoy having the huge amounts of power on tap to fry the wheels in third on demand.

I'm a dreamer.. :D

Its quite stupid really as people tend not to drive as stupid when they have a powerful car where as all these d*cks in there little buzz box's and commodores flyaround and hit things, kill people going fast around corners to try and make there car feel fast.

eek3.gif

I realised I was doing that exact thing after I got my first Skyline!!

Before that, I owned all these "pocket rocket" cars and "pseudo performance" cars, which in actual fact were just light, economy cars that were able to be thrashed around with no real power behind them.

I used to wring the living daylights out of those things and nail it off every traffic light like I was Michael Schumacher.

As soon as I stepped into the Skyline, my first real performance car, I slowed right down and stopped speeding almost completely on public roads (besides a few late night Old Pacific Hwy runs :))

I think it was a combination of maturity and respect for what I had under my right foot. I couldn't go around flooring the crap out of this car like I did the other cars because I'd almost certaintly wrap it around a telegraph pole...

In hindsight, I think power restrictions (and modification restrictions) for younger drivers is DEFINITELY a good thing.

Having owned a MY00 WRX some years ago, and receiving the quarterly letters from the EPA for a noise inspection... I remember having a conversation with the boys at McLeod & the old Laverton office's about my exhaust. They mentioned the fact that my cat was not in its original location "up close toward the dump pipe extension" and my new exhaust system had the cat located towards the centre of the car, meant it did not comply with ADR Rules, regardless of noise dB. He said if I wanted to keep it in that location I had to get a "ADR or Engineer test thing-a-ma-bobby" which would cost approx $3K, and if it passed then I could keep it. <---EDIT: This also applies to any mod other than factory.

All in all, the laws "especially in VIC" THE PLACE TO BE defected, are ridiculous & none of the involved authorities have a consistant view on these issues. Oh... EPA & alike have nothing to do with Road Worthy Certificates, so although your car passes a RW doesn't mean it passes EPA/ADR.

All I can say is either get out of VIC and live somewhere esle or keep your mods as inconspicuous as possible & hope you dont get caught.....On that note, if your car was registered in a more leanant state other the Brax heaven, could you get away with this sort of crap? What about insurance cover... etc?

Hehe This one Steve?

A herd of buffalo can move only as fast as the slowest buffalo. When the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, we all know, kills brain cells, but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

Sounds good to me..

meshmesh, I think you will find that the EPA accept an IM240 test which can be done in VIC for around $600.

Qld will let you do just about anything to a car, short of strap rockets to the side, NSW have free EPA testing so you can get mods approved as complying with local regs.

On a side, you can drive to NSW and get a free IM240 test done, as testing there is free.

Joel, exactly, it would apply to drivers too, so if you make it compulsary for young guys to own twin turboed old holden V8s (which predate emission ADRs and therefore are quite legal without having to go through the nause of testing and compliance,) it will make the roads safer very quickly:p - kill em off before they have a chance to breed

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Lucky man, who owns it in the family? Any pics? 
    • The engine stuff is Greg Autism to the Max. I contacted Tony Mamo previously from AFR who went off to make his own company to further refine AFR heads. He is a wizard in US LS world. Pretty much the best person on earth who will sell you things he's done weird wizard magic to. The cam spec is not too different. I have a 232/234 .600/603 lift, 114LSA cam currently. The new one is 227/233 .638 .634. The 1.8 ratio roller rockers will effectively push this cam into the ~.670 range. These also get Mamo'ified to be drilled out and tapped to use a 10mm bolt over an 8mm for better stability. This is what lead to the cam being specced. The plan is to run it to 6800. (6600 currently). The Johnson lifters are to maintain proper lift at heavy use which is something the LS7's supposedly fail at and lose a bit of pressure, robbing you of lift at higher RPM. Hollow stem valves for better, well everything, Valve train control. I dunno. Hollow is better. The valves are also not on a standard valve angle. Compression ratio is going from 10.6 to 11.3. The cam is smaller, but also not really... The cam was specced when I generated a chart where I counted the frames of a lap video I had and noted how much of the time in % I spent at what RPM while on track at Sandown. The current cam/heads are a bit mismatched, the standard LS1 heads are the restriction to power, which is why everyone CNC's them to get a pretty solid improvement. Most of the difference between LS1->LS2->LS3 is really just better stock heads. The current cam is falling over about 600rpm earlier than it 'should' given the rest of my current setup. CNC'ing heads closes the gap with regards to heads. Aftermarket heads eliminate the gap and go further. The MMS heads go even further than that, and the heads I have in the box could quite easily be bolted to a 7.0 427ci or 454 and not be any restriction at all. Tony Mamo previously worked with AFR, designed new heads from scratch then eventually founded his own business. There he takes the AFR items and performs further wizardry, CNC'ing them and then manually porting the result. He also ports the FAST102 composite manifold: Before and after There's also an improved racing crank scraper and windage tray. Helps to keep oil in the pan. Supposedly gains 2% power. Tony also ports Melling oil pumps, so you get more oil pressure down low at idle, and the same as what you want up top thanks to a suitable relief spring. There's also the timing chain kit with a Torrington bearing to make sure the cam doesn't have any thrust. Yes I'll post a before and after when it all eventually goes together. It'll probably make 2kw more than a setup that would be $15,000 cheaper :p
    • Because the cars wheels are on blocks, you slide under the car.   Pretty much all the bolts you touched should have been put in, but not fully torque up.   Back them off a turn or two, and then tighten them up from under the car with the wheels sitting on the blocks holding car up in the air.
    • Yes. Imagine you have the car on the ground, and you mine away all the ground under and around it, except for the area directly under each individual wheel. That's exactly how it'd look, except the ground will be what ever you make the bit under each wheel from
    • Yes, if you set the "height" right so that it's basically where it would be when sitting on the wheel. It's actually exactly how I tighten bolts that need to be done that way. However....urethane bushes do NOT need to be done that way. The bush slides on both the inner and outer. It's only rubber bushes that are bonded to the outer that need to be clamped to the crush tube in the "home" position. And my car is so full of sphericals now that I have very few that I need to do properly and I sometimes forget and have to go back and fix it afterwards!
×
×
  • Create New...