Today I had to get up waaaaaay too early for my liking to drive my ’57 Chrysler Windsor to the local DMV station for it’s Dutch title application.
It was a chilly and rainy morning and the car told me she didn’t like it at all by holding back when pushing on the throttle.
Up untill today I had never been able to actually ‘drive’ the car around since it’s not legal to drive on the streets yet. So, as I pulled out of the garage and headed on down the road I found the engine was low on power, like it wasn’t getting enough gas.
Eventhough I had to drive a short distance on a traffic packed highway, I was kinda glad I could easily keep up because everyone was moving slowly. I did manage to arrive at the DMV station just 5 minutes before my appointment.
Our Dutch DMV tests the car’s technical items like steering and suspension for wear, rot and general, proper operation.
With old cars we have less rules to worry about, there’s no exhaust-emission tests for instance.
In one of the photos below the car had just been driven up to the brake-dynometer. The rolls are powered by an electric motor, the brakes are applied and the machine measures the actual brakingforce produced by the front and rear brakes in seperate runs.
No more than 30% of brake force difference between the left and right wheel is allowed. The car passed with flying colors with hardly any difference at all.
Below the car’s headlights are tested for correct light-image and alignment.
It turned out I had made an error and put the pass.side headlight bulb in the housing the wrong way. ‘Normally’ the DMV fails the test and let you make another appointment on another day after you fixed the problem(s). But the guy doing the test was cool and told me I could fix the problem if I wanted to on the spot while he tested the car next in line. Luckily I brought a couple of tools and was able to correct the problem.
After the headlight-check the car went into the VIN-number-bay, where the VIN-number gets punched into the chassis.
Right after that the car goes outside to be weighed. Then it’s back to the office again and leave an arm or a leg before you can go home again.
