Post #170850 by hewey on Sun, Jul 10, 2005 9:07 AM

On 2005-07-09 10:48, Gigantalope wrote:
Hey there Hewey, a pal of mine from WA. was telling me it's not legal to make a car into a Hot Rod there. He was thrilled while visiting and seeing all the chopped and channel'd sleds at a local meet.

In the NT I've seen tons of vehicles that looked all but home made...are there state to state differences in what a bloke can do to a car? It's surprizing to me that a civilized place like OZ would have so many rules and regulations...I expect that crap here.

Do tell

I'm not an expert, but I'll have a go.

The road rules are different for each state. The Australian Street Rod Federation (ASRF) are attempting to get federal rules across the board for hot rods.

Hot rods are most definitely legal down under (although, I think WA is particulaly tough on modified cars). Generally we can't have exposed wheels on highboys (most people run cyle guards), no bluedots, no slicks, etc. Queensland is also tuff. They were going to outlaw airbag suspension and even dropped spindles 'cause too many mini truck modifiers were doing dodgy engineering jobs. Not sure what happened with that. Chopping, channeling etc is all okay, provided it has appropriate engineer report saying quality is good etc.

Many rods are on special rego. You can get club rego (which basically allows you to go on club runs, and the odd 'test' run), classic/historic rego (limited miles/year) etc.

From what i have read, there is more rules and regulations here than in the states. Again, I'm no expert. As far as your mate - what part of WA was he from? If he was from a small town, yeh there might not have been any local rods (on the road anyway).

Here is a good link with plenty of pics from various rod runs in Australia:http://www.the-rumbler.com/

If you want more info, talk to PEDDRO. He would have more of an idea than me. he's based in Victoria