I'm trying to convince someone to remove four junk automobiles from their property. Other than anecdotal evidence, are there any statistics or studies (insurance companies, etc) that show that once a vehicle has been inoperative for a certain amount of time, the odds that it will ever be repaired diminish rapidly?
I would make a random guess that after a vehicle has been sitting on the rims or on blocks for 6 months, the odds of it ever being repaired are near zero, and it is better to dispose of it. Sure, you COULD fix it someday, but WILL you?
Maybe you wont fix it, but unless there is a law requiring them to remove the cars, they are under no obligation to do so. Many DONT CARE if they will not be fixed. They own them, and they dont want to part with even a junker.
I doubt you will find any studies on this. Insurance companies don't know what happens to a car after they quit insuring it... It could be junk, sitting in a yard or sold and insured with a different company. The only other person who keeps any information would be the DMV and I haven't ever seen anything from them like this but you could contact them to see if it available.
A lot of the restoration potential depends on the car. If the car is something that a collector would find of value then the chances of it being repaired one day are much greater. My Imperial sat on four flats for 20 years before I bought it and it runs fine now but if it is just a garden variety very common 80'sor 90's car then chances are slim that anyone is ever going to want to put the money in to it to get it running again.
If this is a neighbor issue there may be zoning laws that could help. For instance in my locale if a car is outside in public view it has to be licensed, insured and capable of moving under its own power. If it is inside a structure there rules do not apply. Doubtful that this same set of rules applies wherever you are but there may be similar laws on the books that you could use in your favor. 'Course if this is the case it might be better to have a friendly neighbor with four junk cars in the yard than an unfriendly neighbor with none..
Absolutely not! And even if an old car is "undesirable" (for example, a
4-door instead of a coupe, severely deteriorated, etc.) its quite likely that quite a number of parts from the car ARE of significant value to the restoration community. Old cars are never "junk," they're a resource that some of us value highly.
Well, my son just revived an 87 Dodge mini van that was abandoned in our driveway for over 3 years. It needed brake pads and shoes with one line and one caliper needed, new wheel bearing grease, a new fuel pump (that pump was dead when parked), new 'used' tires, a new battery and he was good to go. He got it for basically nothing and learned from the repairs with me available for advise and tools. It passed safety and emissions.
I have an 87 Cherokee that has been in the driveway since last spring that I slowly have been taking apart to swap engines with the rusted one we now drive. It will get done, but the timespan will likely be over a year.
Had my CJ7 down for a year and a half while doing a frame up restore. Even had our camping bug/rain tent up over that....
Had a 66 Rover TC2000 in the back yard for over a year before putting it on the road. When I waxed it it went from powdery robins egg blue to sea blue. The neighbors had a hard time believing that that thing that was up on blocks was the same car. LOL!
So basically yes, there 'are' people that can have that 'spare' beater up and going pretty fast when it is needed.
Not really what you wanted to hear eh...
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail > I'm trying to convince someone to remove four junk automobiles from
If you want evidence, just drive through the poorer rural sections of West Virginia to see generations of cars in back yards. Common sense would say that the longer a car is stored in the open the more it will deteriorate and the less useful it will be.
So what you are looking for is support for you to tell your neighbor that he has no intention of doing anything with the cars. I would suggest that you look at city or county zoning and nuisance codes.
Your expression of "common sense" and what is "useful" is actually just another way of expressing your ignorance. Someone who has just spent the last 20 years raising chickens in an old station wagon has no illusions about ever putting the car on the road again.
A further suggestion for the OP: Mind your own fuggin' business. You don't like YOUR NEIGHBOR'S cars being in HIS yard? Tough shit. Build a fence so you can't see them, or move. What he does on/with his land is his business, and you're an asshole for attempting to interfere with it.
Are you are talking about the original posters message? If so, you should take the time to read it, because he clearly refers to someone who has left the cars in place for 6 months. Doing so will help you to compose a meaningful response next time.
On the other hand you may be offering your current employment as an example of how cars can be left in place for an extended time as a chicken roost and used afterward. I'm sure you will find several salvagable parts in your old station wagon once you have shoveled out all the chicken shit out. I'm sure you would find the rear seat would make a dandy sofa for your front porch.
The OP wanted evidence that storing a car outdoors with the intention of repairing it some day was not feasible. Presumably, the OP's neighbor has made some claim that he intends to restore the cars. You provided evidence that was worthless. You might as well have directed the OP to his local salvage yard as evidence that a stored car will never run again. You seem to be too dense to understand that sometimes cars are kept even though the owners never expect to make them run again.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:1168826994.559705.231120 @v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com:
There is only one source I know of that could possibly supply such information: The DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in Great Britain.
If a car is no longer used on the road but has not been scrapped, its owner must annually declare "SORN" (Statutory Off-Road Notification). It's free and is done in the same way as renewing your annual road tax.
What this means is that the DVLA has a record of all extant vehicles, whether untaxed (not on the road) or taxed. The system has only been in use for a few years, so there isn't much data yet.
Spoken like a true hillbilly. I guess if the neighbor wants to brew some shine or cook a little crack that's no ones business either. The fact is that dumbasses who leave junk cars in the yard cause property values to fall for the entire neighborhood.
And so does the home with one too many garden gnomes, or the house that's painted purple. Need approval of a council to paint your railings green, because it was decided that black is the only acceptable color that didn't reduce property values. Anything that someone might not like can be considered to reduce property values.
And it's funny what gets called a 'junk' car these days. That car you haven't been driving but is perfectly fine... now interpeted as a junk car even though it appears perfectly fine because it is despite the law requiring a junk car to be missing an engine or other serious problem.
It would improve the chances of others understanding what you mean if you would simply read what the original poster said and try responding to it. That said I understand there are guys like you whose aspiration in life is to maintain a large yard full of junk cars. Indeed there are a few of those clowns who try to pass that junk off as collectible and sometimes post links to their site purporting that stuff has value. I've always wondered why those guys take pictures of those junkers with grass growing up through them.
The problem comes from differing opinions I guess. One mans junk really is another mans treasure. On the other hand an 81 Celebrity with 200K on the clock, a blown engine and a bad case of body rot isn't something you really need to make your neighbors look at for the next 20 years. It's junk now and will still be junk then. In fact it was junk 20 years ago... lol
Hmph. Silly me with my dead cars and race car in the back yard. Too bad I live in a "fancy" suburban neighbourhood. I used the quotes around fancy because it was rural, and now it's full of 1/2 million dollar houses. MY house has gone almost 50% in 4 years, and half of that had 3 dead cars in the back.
Don't get me wrong, an eyesore is an eyesore, but it's my bloody yard and I have a fence and there's no bylaw against it, so piss off.
Hey I would love to own a little Holler in rural West Virginia. And if populating my yard with cars was what it takes to keep taxes down and people like you from moving in and destroying the neighborhood I could live with that - seems like a small price to pay for being able to live in such a beautiful area.
It is hard, and futile, to come up with such evidence. What difference does it make? If the law doesnt prevent the neighbor from doing it, and if the neighbor has no pride in the way his property looks, you're just out of luck.
And indeed this can cause the neighborhood to go down and can drop your property values. I just spent a year working to get the first zoning ordinance ever for this little town (and which was always needed), and was called a 'commonist*' by one of the local rednecks. Probably a lot more of the good old boys who would put a radiator shop in a residential area felt the same.
(We did get the ordinance finished,and the council adopted it on the first vote)
Anecdotally, I once worked for the same company as one Dr. 'Spike' Jordan. Spike loved cars. He found a rusting Stutz Bearcat in an Oklahoma field, bought it from the farmer, pulled it out and had it TOTALLY renovated. What a beautiful thing it was when he got it finished. So the motto can be 'Never say never'. (Although it is unlikely that a trashed out Ford Fairmont will ever go to auto heaven like the Stutz did)
While I agree that it is irresponsible and impolite to store any kind of junk in plain sight, what often gets overlooked (deliberately, for some reason) is that cars are PRIVATE PROPERTY just like the land itself. For some reason, there's a tendency to treat cars differently- as if the fact that they're not licensed and running somehow makes them public property fit for removal at the whim of people other than the owner. They are not.
Or perfectly fine (cosmetically and mechanically) cars that aren't being used. In fact, like so many other things, what gets enforced isn't even law, but the guidelines decided upon by the police department or busy body neighbors, etc and so forth. Judges employed to gather revenue can't even be bothered to read the actual law, a law specifically written to go after cars that are dismantled, missing wheels, engine, etc and so forth.
But yes, for some reason because it's a car, cities feel entitled to have their police forces come on to PRIVATE property to take private property. It would be criminal for them to take a garbage can, but they find it acceptable to take a car.
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