In the PRC (California) the frame of the car or lowest part of the chassis cannot be below the lowest part of the rim. Conversely the frame or lowest part of the chassis cannot be more than 21" off the ground. However, the rules are not evenly or sometimes even enforced thus the big A$$ trucks that you need a ladder to get in to. I'm not aware of an impound law other than if you drink and drive you car is garrenteed to be impounded. Somebody else may know more on this subject. I'm too lazy to look up the vehicle code.
I agree with 1tireman. We see dozens of pictures around the Internet of "White Trash Repairs" and "Redneck Repairs", etc. Even some hilarious videos of home inspections discovering some phenomenally stupid things done by people who were certain that they were doing it right or "right enough". I'm pretty sure that there has been some point in the past where an issue has arisen that donk rims were installed and the car improperly modified to allow it to happen. We've all used the phrase "Somebody has to die before a law gets passed" and, to me, it seems pretty likely that's exactly what happened. I used to have to travel to Virginia Beach on business a fair amount. I saw an extremely high number of Ford F450's jacked up high enough to pass a Lamborghini under them. It didn't take too many accidents for the police to start watching out for jacked up trucks. Enthusiasts like ourselves love to work on our cars and we take it seriously enough to care about the car and the consequences that driving that car might have on others. Unfortunately "enthusiasts" and "common sense" aren't always properly aligned and there are folks out there who just plain don't care about the safety aspect of doing their own work. In order for police to pull over a vehicle these days they've got to have a pretty good reason and if spotting 22" wheels has been identified to the officers as a suitable indication of possible safety infractions I think is makes sense. It wasn't that long ago that an attentive officer spotted me driving my Roadmaster home with bad rear shocks and he was pretty quick to snag me. I can't fault the guy for doing his job.
So he knew they were bad. He didn't assume they were and impound the car for further inspection. Or take it in and see what else isn't up to code. I'm sure this will always be a back and forth issue. Hopefully it doesn't make it's way to ny. The potholes alone keep us from going anywhere near those heights so we'll probably be ok.
That officer was no mechanic. I can't presume to think that every officer on the road is sufficiently trained in vehicle maintenance to correctly identify bad shocks. What did happen is that he assumed they were bad, and he then followed me to take the car to a safety check centre where the car was checked out and they confirmed the shocks to be bad. They also discovered that I needed some other repairs and that my emissions system wasn't working correctly. They chose to ignore my shocks but I got a ticket for the emissions system which was completely unrelated to why I was stopped in the first place. Many other cars that day were impounded because of violations that the officers could only assume were there until they were later confirmed after the car was checked out. I'm not trying to be argumentative but from what I saw in the video, the police have been on the lookout for donk wheels because they were told to as part of a safety blitz. The guy that they interviewed claimed that his car was fine but they found other stuff after the fact. He seems to be labouring under the belief that they had no right to look for other problems. Sounds like a very similar scenario to me
Damn, no argument here either. I'm not backing up the guys problems either, just don't care for the procedure. Sounds like they were out to get people that day if they made you go to an inspection center.
