Koen's 86 - every drive a new issue

[Koen]

(05-07-2026 08:57 PM)banpei Wrote:  Nice progress and congratulations on the correction!
That means it is now an official oldtimer. In 10 years' time, you can skip the mandatory bi-yearly APK-check.

Yes! helps a bit with the costs! If you divide the road tax by the amount of km's driven than it's very costly (or I should use the cars more )

(05-08-2026 08:40 AM)Ivan141 Wrote:  Congratulations! That's a win. Must say I appreciate RDW's capacity to be helpful and reasonable towards old car owners (sometimes). When you compare it to the horror stories you sometimes see online from some other EU countries we haven't got much to complain here.

Indeed, I never had a bad experience with them. Usually very helpful and willing to see what's possible within the rules.

(05-12-2026 11:59 AM)ondafly Wrote:  interesting seeing the different regulations. In Ireland any car older than 30 years old, is 56euro per year tax (vintage car). Then at 40 years they are excluded from mandatory vehicle testing.

The tricky part is the vehicle testing, because they change the rules regularly. Almost to encourage cars to be scrapped so its quite hard to even pass first time.

Here they tend to change the rules about road tax quite often. Now you don't have to pay if the car is 40 years or older. But if it's build after 31-12-1987 you always have to pay.

The vehicle test is yearly when the car is >8 years and <30 years old. Then every two years until it's 50 years and then never again. But it's not so bad. If you're car is not (too) rusty, has working wipers, brakes and lights and not too much play in the suspension parts it's usually ok. They do an emissions test, but if the car is old it's usually very difficult to not pass that



Did some more disassembly ... now it's a shell with an interior Next step; make a twin brake master-cilinder setup because I didn't like the feel of the bigger single master with booster in the 5km I drove ...

[ondafly]

sounds like you have a fair testing system though ours is a private company. They make more money if you fail. I've had some really bizarre things fail on cars over the years.

A perfect example was a WRX I owned, it had factory xenon headlights, but no headlight washers. Never came with headlight washers in Japan and European model never got the xenons at the time. This was fine for a few years, until a change in the test requiring all xenon fitted cars to have headlight washers. Car failed test. My options were to hack up the bumper and fit aftermarket headlight washers, fit controls etc or source halogen lights instead. I ended up selling the car to Scotland

Anyway - I look forward to seeing how this build goes !

[Koen]

Similar here, they are also privately owned. Usually the cheaper ones tend to fail you more often because they will only make money when they do fixes to your car.

For situations like your WRX there are online test stations (so I've been told ) expensive, but they gamble that they are not being checked if they did their work properly by our government ...

[decryphe]

(05-12-2026 03:37 PM)ondafly Wrote:  My options were to hack up the bumper and fit aftermarket headlight washers, fit controls etc or source halogen lights instead.

Same here but with a public office doing the inspections.

In general they're strict but mostly fair.