Can't Work on Your Own Car? Worst Law Ever! Ep. 5.379

hello welcome what's gonna relate to US law I'm Steve Leto today's topic is perhaps the most requested of all time most requested of all time on this channel but nude videos for four or five years now and I've gotten so many requests about this I couldn't begin to mention all the people who asked me about it it's been widely covered in the news also including Jalopnik Jason torch in ski wrote an article about it which I read was pretty funny and good and also a Jason recently finished a book I guess it's coming out with one of the greatest titles of all time it's a book on self-driving cars and the title is robot take the wheel the book could be blank with that title I'd buy it so here's the deal Sacramento County California has made it illegal in essence to work on your own car in your own driveway under most circumstances this is the kind of thing that happens when people who don't like cars pass laws here's the deal I'm gonna read to you straight from the website and then you can look this up yourself on the Sacramento County website but they're talking about automotive repairs and what are allowed and what are not allowed by way of repairs to be done at your own residence okay so you have a house you've got a garage you've got a car you want to work on can you work on your own car in your own driveway well first of all you talk about whether it's minor automotive repair or major automotive repair minor automotive repair is brake part replacement minor tune ups change of oil and filter repair of flat tires lubrication and other similar operations which by the way that's vague right there and that's gonna be a problem other similar operations so I'm allowed to do a minor tune-up but what's a similar operation to a minor tune-up I'm allowed to change the oil in the filter is flushing the radiator similar to that or not you know so other similar operations immediately gets you into the air vagaries and vagaries are not good in the law but here's the deal is minor vehicle repair permitted at residences this is their own question and answer answer yes however it is unlawful for any person to engage in or permit others to engage in minor vehicle repair or maintenance in any agricultural cultural residential residential interim estate and interim residential zones under any of the following circumstances one using tools not normally found in a residence - conducted on vehicles registered to persons not currently residing on the lot or Percel 3 conducted outside a fully enclosed garage and resulting in any vehicle being inoperable for a period in excess of 24 hours so taking those backwards you cannot do the work outside of a garage presumably in an exposed area where the vehicle is inoperable for more than 24 hours and you know I kind of see that where you say you got some car out there it's being worked on and now suddenly it's it's just sitting there I'm not saying I agree with that but at least that one makes a little bit of sense to me but going backwards again number 2 conducted on vehicles registered to persons not currently residing on the lot so you you you can work on your own car but not someone else's car number one using tools not normally found in a residence normally found in a residence whose residents okay I've got relatives who've got tools at their residence that I could show it to you you couldn't tell me what it is because it's such an unusual specialist a specific tool and most people I guess would have a probably a hammer a screwdriver pliers wood players be normally in a residence how about a ratchet set that's the one that taught the torch asked about in john acardo because how many people got a ratchet set in their house seen a set of socket wrenches how many people got those how about a torque wrench very few people have a torque wrench in their house so if I'm using a torque wrench in the driveway does it suddenly make that activity illegal and why why you know you understand that well I guess in a residence could refer to the garage also as about to say maybe you know you don't have a jack in your residence but I guess you'd have in your garage but tools not normally found in a residence I have a sneaky feeling if I walked bend down my street and did house searches of the tools these people have the residences most of them don't have the tools necessary to do a break part replacement they might not have the tools do a minor tune-up change the oil and filter now here's the thing you can sometimes if you can get a good grip on it you can undo an oil filter by hand and and I'm a firm believer in the fact that if you do your own oil filters you can actually put it on by hand and take it off by hand but they do make a tool for removing an oil filter called an oil filter wrench and it's got a loop on it and it's got a handle on it that allows you to kind of latch on to it and get a good grip most residences would not have an oil filter wrench on the premises and so using an oil filter wrench while doing an approved minor automotive repair be allowed no because it says it is unlawful to do any of the following using tools not normally found in residents so you can do the oil change but just don't use an oil wrench to do it and there's other ones repair of flat tires I have a tire patch kit I plug tires all the time I worked at the gas station for years I've mentioned before and I got good at plugging tires and I know that many places you go to now frown on the practice because I think it's unsafe or they'll tell you it's on safes they want to sell you a tire but if you get a perfect nail right through the middle of the tire the surface that hits you know that that's on the road not the sidewall or something you can plug that and drive on that for thousands and thousands and thousands of miles and in fact I believe my tire repair kits in my Oh to Explorer right now in the back is a little cubby singer and I do that because I've actually patched my own tires when I was out someplace and I mentioned before I was one time over in Grand Rapids and just a circuit court walked up and I saw one of those sheet metal washers and a screw you know the sheet metal screw stuck perfectly in the bottom of my tire I just run it over as it pulled in the parking lot and I'm like okay so I drove to a gas station pulled up right in front of an air pump walked over players yanked it out stuffed the tool in there fixed it clipped it put errant drove home and I drove on that plug for about another 10,000 miles but following the logic of the way this statute is written in Sacramento County California you couldn't do that your own driveway because the tool being used is not normally found in a residence I guarantee you I'm the only person within a mile radius of where I live that has one of those tools in his residence so the people who wrote this statute don't know anything about cars or they don't care and in both of those instances those people shouldn't be writing laws about cars if you don't understand cars don't write the laws about cars and if you don't like cars well you got to be careful how you write the laws because you can't just write stupid lost you don't like cars so then here's the thing what is a major automotive repair any vehicle repair or maintenance other than minor vehicle repair to include any body or painting work of vehicles or vehicle parts operations is major automotive repair permitted at residences no no it is unlawful for any person to engage in or permit others to engage in major repair or maintenance of vehicles in any agricultural agriculture residential residential interim agricultural holding interim estate or interim residential zones so it is unlawful to do any major auto repairs and major repairs are any vehicle repair and maitenance other than minor vehicle repairs including body or paintwork of vehicles or vehicle parts operations I know vehicle parts operations is supposed to mean because it's written I'm not sure if that's tied to the any body or painting work but any vehicle repair or maintenance other than minor vehicle repair earlier so there's five things you are allowed to do break part replacement minor tune ups change the oil and filter repair flat tires lubrication but then there's the sixth weird catch-all other similar operations but then they say any vehicle repair or maintenance other than minor vehicle repair is not allowed you're allowed to do these five and you're also allowed to do other similar operations that not defined but you are not allowed to do anything else so again poorly written because if you did a Venn diagram you'd realize a bunch of these things overlap and like three dimensions or four dimensions possibly five so a couple other things to point out why is code enforcement concerned about residential automotive repair they answer this question because they know everyone's going to ask it why would you pass a stupid law like this oh they have an answer why we passed this stupid law the chemicals involved in major automobile repair can pollute our neighborhoods and endanger the health and well-being of our residents furthermore this kind of activity increases vehicle traffic and the visual impact can negatively impact property values so the question is does me working on my own car in my own driveway increase vehicle traffic why would it my cars already here in fact if I drove it someplace else to get it worked out and drove it home that would increase traffic that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard to explain why working on your own car in your own Drive ought to be illegal second of all the chemicals involved in major automobile repair let's talk about major automobile repair what's perhaps the biggest most major automotive repair you can do what's what's the thing if I said hey come on come on over to my house I'm doing some engine work and I want to send chills down your spine what would I say I want to do I'd say I spun a bearing on the main crank you know main bearing on my crank and I want to yank the crankshaft out of my engine and I want to replace the crankshaft redo the bearings and put it all back together again that that's major repairs my friends okay so to do that if you read the Motors manual of Chilton's manuals gonna say number one we used to joke about this number one turn off engine number two pop hood you know and and it goes that but anyways at some point or another you'll probably have to pull the engine out of the car so you have to dismantle all the things that it's attached to disconnect things disconnected from the bell housing and then you're gonna have to you know little prior to come off the car literally off not just open and then you're going to lift it up and out okay put it on an engine stand tear it all apart and get to the crankshaft now I understand it's possible to do these in another order of operations depending the vehicle and so on but let's just assume we're gonna do it my way which is the hard way I'm purposely describing to you the hard way we're gonna do this okay wait so we so we we have the engine honest and we've dismantled it down to the block because I've decided we also need to possibly look at the Pistons and the connecting rods and we do all this stuff and then we put it all back together again and we put it back in the car and we reconnect everything and we put the hood back and close the hood just make sure it closes let me open it back up again and we start it up and it runs okay we did that operation and it took some time the chemicals involved in major automobile repair the chemicals involved what chemicals were involved in rads described to you which like I said is one of the most severe major operations you could do on a car well we'd have to probably drop the oil pan okay that's oil but then again you're also allowed to do an oil change back at minor automotive repair so it can't be those chemicals um what else we're gonna do well let's see to be honest here well we have to admit that when we put the engine back together again we're gonna fuse gaskets gaskets and we're probably gonna have to spray the gaskets with the stuff you spray on gaskets when you put them back in place and put the engine back together again so there is an aerosol can alight I believe they also make it in a little thing you can you can dab on with a brush so there's gonna be some gasket sealant is that the chemical involved in major Ottoman repair kit is that really polluting the neighborhoods and endangering the health and well-being of our residents I don't think so so you know I understand that people who don't know a thing about cars you know cars pollute there's smog and pollutant yeah stuff that comes in a tailpipe when they're running when I'm just mantling the car it's not running it's not it's not spreading pollutants into the air while I'm working on the engine it's absurd chemicals involved major automobile repair can pollute our neighborhoods and endanger the health and well-being of our residents okay this kind of activity increases via hit vehicle traffic no and visual impact can negatively impact property guys now I will admit if I pushed my car to the end of my driveway and set up the cherry picker down there and set my toolboxes up down there and had five hillbillies standing around the drinking beer while we're working on this thing and you drove by and saw that Jamboree at the end of my driveway you might say hey you know something that doesn't look good that's not how we do it it's not how I do it I got a garage now I might raise the door of the garage to get some fresh air in there but then again it's the wintertime in Michigan we don't do that but we would you know in the garage pop the hood do the work so if you drove by and looked up the driveway you might see us in the garage working does that negatively impact property values that someone's inside their own garage working on their own car once in a while I don't think so and again I know people have too right now it's gonna be 1 or 2 or say Steve you have to understand they're cracking down on the people who abuse the system the people who've got the car at the you know parked in the driveway it's uncovered its dismantled if you ask what it's doing this oh I'm gonna fix it up someday that's a little different that's a blight issue that's something sitting there that's not doing anything but if I want to pop the hood of my car and work on it and the privacy of my own garage especially if I can close the door and you can't even see it chemicals aren't escaping into the neighborhood no one's getting hurt and nobody's property values are being decreased in fact I would argue that if I was considering buying a house in a neighborhood and somebody says oh by the way Steve we got rules either HOA rules or municipal rules or Sacramento County rules that say you cannot work on your own car in your own driveway I would not buy the house I'd go move someplace else it's that important to me and you say Steve wait a second you're an attorney who spends time hanging out in the floor of Richard Petty's car see previous video do you really spend that much time working in a car no I don't know I don't but to me that is something I should have the right to do if I need to or if I want to and like I said I'm gonna plug my own flat tires I am NOT going to actually put my car up on Jack's pull the wheel off and drive it someplace and have someone else do it when I can do it perfectly well myself in 1/10 the time at 120th the cost okay so this law is absurd it is one of the worst laws I've seen in a long time it's horribly written and one of the things that's so nefarious to me is that it's gonna stay on the books probably because not enough people are gonna be speaking up about it because in every neighborhood like mine or 20 or 30 houses I'm the only person ticked off enough to actually doing about it and make a video so I hope everybody in Sacramento County who sees this video gets up in arms and I hope people across America also get up in arms at least the point of complaining commenting calling somebody sending an email or doing something as a show of support for all the people in Sacramento County who like to wrench on their own cars but can't legally because of a stupid law like this so in case you're curious and perhaps I should have said it's the front end if you want to know how I feel about this law this law is stupid it's one of the worst laws I've ever seen questions or comments put them below let's talk you

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 310,790

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com

Id: I29KDz_RCo0

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 18 2019