OV9

Looking like it may be game over for them- a tuner has been fined £7k for fitting a decat pipe link and a installing a stupid pop and bang map on a car booked in by undercover fuzz

https://www.evo.co.uk/news/206327/after ... de-illegal

Oh no!

....anyway....

(I live on a hill and popcorn maps at 2am are intensely annoying)

I've always been on a bit of a sticky wicket with the TVR. It has always not only popped and banged like a good'un, but also attracts attention at night thanks to clearly visible flames.

I've been tugged at three times for noise over the years (plus one which was for speed, when they raised the issue of noise).

My argument has always been that the wording of the law was "significantly louder than manufacturer's standard", and insisted that the clearly aftermarket exhaust was just a like for like replacement of the standard one (good luck finding any official record of what TVR considered "standard" that week). Fortunately, the car is low enough to make visually checking for the presence of a cat kinda tricky roadside.

Interesting. The Lotus pops and flames, but only if you're driving it hard. I was followed by plod for quite some miles a few weeks ago and they couldn't find cause to pull me over. Even if they did pull me over, it's not straightforward to check it for a cat.

What's the law on flames? Surely there's a load of cars that flame from the factory anyway.

That’s the thing, a high performance car will pop and flame but only when driven hard. Hard enough that you’ll be doing illegal speeds and be out in the countryside. Thus unlikely to be doing it in front of the police and also unlikely to be annoying too many people.
Those cars you see driving in town centres and changing gear at 15mph and exploding with massive flames have clearly been tampered with.

Reads like they were unlucky to be picked in a sting operation. Probably a Google search of local tuners, surely there are loads that offer such mods.
I wonder if it was the decat pipe (emissions failure) or noise levels from the exhaust, or both, that they got them on.

They were busted on not warning the customer that it’s not road legal. America have a similar law and almost every aftermarket part and tune you buy, whether genuinely road legal or not comes with a sticker saying “not for use on public roads” just to cover ass.

JonMad wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 2:13 pm Reads like they were unlucky to be picked in a sting operation. Probably a Google search of local tuners, surely there are loads that offer such mods.
I wonder if it was the decat pipe (emissions failure) or noise levels from the exhaust, or both, that they got them on.

LOL, unlucky.

Any place selling a decat to a car on road plates knows exactly what they're doing.

Nefarious wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:30 am I've always been on a bit of a sticky wicket with the TVR. It has always not only popped and banged like a good'un, but also attracts attention at night thanks to clearly visible flames.

First time we went for a drive (you, Mudge and I in Cerb 4.5, Z3M Coupe and VXR8 respectively) I remember giggling as we went through villages with your Cerb firing machine guns and throwing an invisibiltiy cloak over the other two cars in the convoy.

Unlucky, it might appear, maybe, to be the one that was picked, but day-to-day "everyone else is doing it so therefore it's OK" is an easy self-justification that holds zero weight in court. As they just found out.

My Dad spent most of his professional life in Trading Standards. This case wasn't a TS sting but TS powers have (had) an overlap with Environmental Health and the noise thing could easily have fallen under their area.

Suffice to say I'd bet money that it wasn't completely random they chose that garage. There would be history and they'd only do an exercise like this if they were confident of a result. Jus sayin.

I have zero problem with hard driven cars doing it, I do have a problem with knobheads in straightpiped dsg farting hatchbacks driving like knobheads around town doing it every time they lift off the throttle.

Young lad in an MX5 has just started frequenting our locale with one of these maps. Rescue dug - who is terrified of filteworks - gets really stressed when he passes by.

When I next see him, I am going to explain that I’m a total petrol head, but -<delivers full force kick to his genital area>.

mik wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 11:17 pm

Nefarious wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:30 am I've always been on a bit of a sticky wicket with the TVR. It has always not only popped and banged like a good'un, but also attracts attention at night thanks to clearly visible flames.

First time we went for a drive (you, Mudge and I in Cerb 4.5, Z3M Coupe and VXR8 respectively) I remember giggling as we went through villages with your Cerb firing machine guns and throwing an invisibiltiy cloak over the other two cars in the convoy.

If you think it gets a lot of attention in Scotland, you should see what happens when you go to Europe.
IMO it's nice, and (these days) rare, but the reaction in France (and especially Germany) is like a spaceship has landed.
A german friend told me that it's a combination of British stuff being automatically uber cool, and incredulity that such a thing could *possibly* be legal (which, I'm sure under the new TUV regs, it most definitely isn't)

Oh! And I get nervy about the noise the 1 makes! I don't know what's been done to it, I suspect the BMW Motorsports pipe thar was common and maybe a silencer beleye but on boost it screams.