Home made cars

Factual Questions
1

Let’s just pretend I knew an amazing bit more about cars than I actually do. In fact, let’s pretend I know so much that I could make my own car out of a pile of parts and some additional metal. So, I head on down to the local auto wrecker and buy all the more complicated bits and then manage to weld some extra steel together to make a chassis, cobble an engine together, put some seats in that baby and I’m ready to go in the Jophiel Mark I. (Ok, so I had to get tires, an exhaust system, etc… you know what I mean).

What makes my new car street legal? Is it? If it doesn’t match any existing car on the roads, how would I insure it? What does the insurance company go on when setting a price? (“You made your own car and want to drive it? Send us $15,000/mth for insurance.”) Is this scenario even possible?

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

2

if you did make the car yourself, it’s streetlegalness would depend on whether it passed safety tests… since most of these involve crashing the car, i would venture to say you’d better make a few.

As for insurance, the company would simply send an appraiser to determine the likelihood of it costing them a bunch ofmoney and determine your fee based on his advice. Either that or they simply refuse to cover you.

"Elmo knows where you live! – Elmo, after Homer stiffed PBS for $10,000
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet

3

If you’re talking about the US, I’d guess that what you would need to do would be different in different states, since virtually all of the licensing laws are state laws.

I don’t think even the big automakers are required to do crash tests. Although the DOT does do some, as spot checks, they don’t crash test every car every year.

I imagine there is some system for allowing and insuring home-built vehicles that isn’t too onerous. Here in Ohio, I see VW/Harley motor-trikes, dune buggies, and once or twice even a dragster (with slicks!), all with street plates, none of which could reasonably be described by any simple make/model year combination.

4

An aside: If a homemade car can’t be registered, how do kit-cars make it? Is it because they are on the chassis of an “established” auto?

5

First you need to get a title for your car, to prove that it’s yours.

Assuming you didn’t build the frame, chassis, or engine from scratch, the easiest way to do this is to get the serial number from one of the above, go down to the Dmv and get a salvage title.

Assuming the frame for example is from a '56 Chevy, you would just declare your car a '56 chevy.

Once you have the title you could procede normally, assuming your vehicle would pass inspection.

If this is not satisfactory, and you want your car to say “Jophiel Mark I” on the title, you will need to get a special title.

THere are special titles for kit-cars, homemade cars, hot rods, and classics. The laws for getting these vary from state to state, but the DMV is sure to have the appropriate brochure for the process in your area.

6
      • I know of three home-built custom cars: all used part of another auto’s frame for registration purposes. One only used a square-shaped center section, about four feet by four feet, but that was the section that had the frame serial number on it. That part didn’t actually do anything; it was welded on after the rest of the frame was finished. But that’s legal, in the US/Illinois anyway. You might have noticed that when hot-rod magazines build custom cars, even from “scratch”, they tend to use salvaged frame rails (which already bear a serial number). -This is the reason.
  • Kit-car manufacturers don’t have to crash test their cars but many do for liability purposes - kit-cars used to be very bad places to be during a crash. Some still are. Most states have rules about overall size & maximum weight, min/max tire diameter & width and tread depth (no slicks allowed) as well as how far the tires can stick out of the bodywork, and tires have to be DOT rated to be used on interstate highways. If tires are real big and/or not covered by bodywork, you may have to put mudflaps on the vehicle (as 18-wheelers must have). Mostly you just have to have all the apropriate lights in the regular places, rear-view mirrors, (now) seat-belts -and- windshield wipers. In most US states -all I think- , if a vehicle has more than three wheels, to be street legal it has to have windshield wipers. And a windshield. Even if the windshield is near-useless: I once saw a car that was a street-legal replica of an Indy/Formula 1 car. It had one stubby windshield wiper for it’s tiny 8" x 6" windshield, because it had to have both. - Now in many states vehicles also have to pass emmissions tests (which often have rules about mixing engine parts) so if you want a '99 Corvette engine for your custom car, you may have to use all the '99 Corvette’s engine parts from the air filter to the exhaust pipe: you can’t leave anything off, and it all has to function as intended, regardless if you want it there or not - you can’t remove the fuel-injection system and replace it with a carburetor, for example. If you want a carbureted COrvette engine, you have to go find an old one that came with a carburetor from the factory, and you have to be able to document that for emissions inspectors (you gotta have proof).
  • Insuring a custom-built car is a bummer. Most regular insurance companies won’t cover the car itself at all, because what they pay (normally, in the case of a regular car) is based on typical market value, so a totally custom-built car ain’t worth much unless it’s made of gold or something like that. They base their estimate on the original value of the car, and they generally won’t cover non-OEM parts. If you buy a mint-condition Pacer worth $1000 and put a helicopter engine worth $200,000 in it, they won’t list the value as $201,000. They won’t even list the value as $1000, because the original engine is gone - so if you are thinking of building your dream-mobile, expect to lose money all along the way. You can usually get liability, medical and all the rest of it though, but many insurers will inspect the car to see that it is reasonably constructed (no Elmer’s glue and popsicle sticks). -And even if the DMV says it’s technically street-legal your regular insurance company doesn’t have to insure it, if they feel it is hazardous. (insert Pacer jokes here)
  • I kinda think of building a custom car myself now and then, but I’m not holding my breath until it happens. - MC
7

Did I do that?

–Tim

You can’t accidently create a handicapped baby whilst smoking pot.

8

As a homebuilder, you are only required to meet roadworthiness requirements. As the poster above said, that involves things like headlights, turn signals, brake lights, reverse lights, proper tires, etc. There may be a bumper requirement in your state, and they all have different rules regarding vehicle configuration. So, you can make a car out of an old bathtub if you want.

There have been lots of one-off custom cars built. Molt Taylor built a combination car/airplane that was licenseable on the road and FAA certified for flying. There are lots of promo vehicles around like the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. The coolest one I saw was a DC-3 fuselage cut in half and turned into a motorhome. I actually saw this thing on the road, and let me tell you it’s startling to look in your rear view mirror and see a DC-3 behind you, complete with grinning guy in pilot’s uniform sitting in the cockpit.

9

This prompts a question-a few years back I had a mechanic friend who bought two wrecked cars (one smashed in front, the other in the rear), he cut them in half and welded the two good sections together> So he had, in effect, a perfectly good car. My question-he had parts with two different IDs-how the heck did he insure this car?

10

egkelly, starting around 1978-83, there is one seventeen-digit VIN, or vehicle identification number on the windshield pillar on the driver’s side. The VIN is also stated on the ID plate on the driver’s side door pillar. I take it that he cut the cars in the front door, with one VIN showing through the windshield and one on the panel.

A car like this might be a candidate for a salvage title, which would note that the vehicle had previously been totaled, or was built out of salvage parts. Of course, a salvage title isn’t necessary to do the work, and is just one more hassle (the state DoT will want receipts for everything on the car, and that’s just part of it), so it might be easier if it’s your own car to just do the work and keep the current title.
In response to the OP,

Jophiel, there is no quick answer to this.

I tried this once, with the goal of making a motorcycle completely out of salvage parts and with a homebuilt frame. I did end up buying the frame prebuilt (and considering my welding skills, this is a good thing), but the basic project was the same. The paperwork is a real hassle, but it’s commonly done. As an example, I’ve heard that there are currently more 1932 Fords registered and on the street than were built that year.

Registration varies in the US from state to state, but generally, any vehicle assembled from the ground up has to be registered as a new car. The state troopers will want to check engine and frame numbers to make sure that the parts weren’t stolen and they might want to see receipts for every nut and bolt that was put on the car. The car will have to pass your state’s inspection and emissions test for cars built this year (You might get lucky and just have to pass for the year the engine was built.) Once you jump through all the hoops, you will be given an assembled vehicle title (or something like that), which will allow you to run the car on the street. Having built a couple of bikes, I am convinced that I didn’t own the bikes, I just owned the titles and the bikes came along as part of the package.
You can get insurance. Actually, there are companies that specialize in this for the restorer, hot-rod and custom crowds. You might be able to get minimal insurance by registering it with a cheapie insurance company (my Honda chopper with no Honda parts except for the engine, rear wheel and voltage regulator was insured as a Honda with no problem.) And MC is right, the insurance companies will want to say that the car has no value (but don’t they always try to do this?)

FWIW: For my Harley, I used a title mill. There were companies in some states that, for a fee, would buy your vehicle, title it and sell it back to you, all by mail. But this could only be done with older vehicles, and couldn’t be done to create a title for a new vehicle.

11

Your friend certainly did not have a “perfectly good car.” In most states this would need to have a salvage title. Cars that have been cleaned up after fires or floods or rebuilt after a major collision fall into this category. There are provisions for dealing with salvage titles and in his case the VIN progably came from the half that had the tag riveted to it. Most modern cars have it on the dash but VW bugs have it on the body in the rear.

12

In a lot of cases, if a car has been written off as salvage it can NOT be brought back to roadworthy status. There are people who will go out and buy a salvaged wreck and rebuild it and sell it. But these vehicles are rarely safe. If the frame had to be extensively straightened it may be weak, and there maybe be internal cracks in steel parts that are not visible to the naked eye.

We have a bit of a mini-crisis in Alberta with out-of-province cars appearing on car lots that happen to have been written off once already as salvage.

13

First:
What MC said.

Now:
Individual VINs have been around since at least the late '50s. Their location varies by manufacturer, but they are typically stamped into the frame/unibody, sometimes major panels, and (rarely) the engine block. On a typical car, the number appears at 2 or more places aside from the dash tag. In theory, you need a salvage title anytime all the numbers don’t match, or when the car has been “totalled” by the insurance company. But there are a lot of ways around that.

Cars that have been totalled and rebuilt are not neccesarily unsafe. It all depends on (1)what the damage was, (2)how it was repaired, (3)who did the work, (4)and why.
(1) I’ve seen insurance companies “total-out” cars that had only cosmetic damage (usually from vandalism when parked) when the cost of repair exceed the insured value. Ugly, but not unsafe.
(2) Even a collision damaged car can be brought back from the dead if it is done correctly. Damaged structural members usually need to be cut out and new ones welded in rather than straigntened. A good shop can put everything back spot-on. Which brings up…
(3) Anything beyond cosmetic damage requires a professional. The newer the design, the more critical each part is to the structural integrity of the whole. If the rebuilder knows his stuff, the car will be fine. If not, it will not.
(4) As rule of thumb, you cannot salvage a car for profit. It just costs too much to do it right. All the good salvage cars I have seen were cases of:
a) flood, fire, vandalism or other mostly cosmetic damage that were repaired as a hobby or,
b) somebody loved the car enough to pay more than it was worth to have it repaired correctly.

“Kit” and custom built cars fall into this last category as well. Don’t expect to make money on the deal (unless you’re building it for someone).