Hopefully that happens everywhere and consistently. I used to work at a gas station and the state only checked how much water was in the main storage tanks, and once every 5 years certified the "counters" on the pumps. That was quite a few years ago though.

 

Well Florida is an outlier state. I didn't know until a year ago that they don't have vehicle inspections. You can literally drive a car with no brakes, bald tires, worn ball joints, no lights, and burning a quart of oil every 100 miles. We drove throughout FL last April, including to Key West, and I never so many cars broken down on the side of the highway.

 

come to California, we have no inspections either, except smog..

 

We had full inspections in the late 1970's but they were done away by the that governor citing high costs and long wait times. The system was so inefficient there were lines of cars backed up out of the facilities and down the roads accessing them, creating traffic hazards for drivers. My dad let me right shotgun on inspection day... we had lots of time to chat while we were in line.

We used to have tailpipe inspections (in the 1990s) until an in-depth media inquiry showed they were basically a tax and proven useless as motor vehicles that shouldn't have passed passed, and some that should have didn't. It was basically a scam presented by the state in the guise of emissions when the entire state already met the federal standards for air quality. And that is all they checked.. tailpipe emissions... (Maybe this was a precursor to the VW/Audi emission scandal?)

Better yet, the inspections were only required in large metro areas.. like Tampa Bay, the Greater Dade county (read Miami) and Greater Jacksonville metro area while less populated areas didn't need one.

The governor at that time cited that it cost 50 million (1990 dollars) each year for the program and the cost wasn't justifiable.

Some background

http://www.nbc-2.com/story/23961987/...le-inspections

I will have to agree about the "cars by the side of the road" but more from what I've seen.. many of them are from out of state.

I do sometimes chuckle.. and if they have their windows down with the blue/white cloud of poor maintenance swirling behind them.. I ask drivers "how many miles do you get per quart"? Normally they are dumbfounded but from time to time I am reminded I am "number one"... ROFLMAO.

Having said that.. right now law enforcement is sadly stuck with identifying rolling death traps and dealing with them on a case-by-case basis... as if they didn't have enough to do already.

 

I use BP 93 octane as did the previous owner. To my knowledge, BP is the only station near me with 93 (others are 91). What's everyone's opinion on 93 vs. 91?

 

 

I agree completely. On my LS, I ran 91 octane because that is the standard premium grade out here. No problems at all. Most of the time I bought gas at Costco.