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A letter to the Minister stirred the pot to the extent that Tony got a visit from two vehicle compliance inspectors from the Registry of Motor vehicles. They went away leaving behind a deficiencies list that included front and rear side marker kights and self-cancelling turn signals. The latter can be satisfied with a timed units - fortunately because the Birkin column is pretty basic. The former requires drilling holes, because the inspectors wouldn't accept that any of the existing lights met the side marker requirement.

The worst deficiency was that they found a weld where a u-joint attaches to an intermediate steering shaft and said "No welding in steering system" which seems to ignore all those Ford and GM rag joints that are welded to their columns. Tony is planning to challenge that one, with engineering support. Welding a rack or a column is one thing, but challenging a commercially-produced joint that is found in loads of Big Three vehicles is wierd. I wonder if the regulation should, or actually reads that you can't modify steering components by welding.

Are you sure about the welding on the joints?

The only weld in a Birkin steering column is where the splined stub at the steering wheel fits into the steering shaft, just below the support bearing.

The ujoints are stamped (versus cast or machined from solid). The bearing caps are staked in. Lots of modern cars have this type of joint.

As for the column weld, how many Birkins are already registered? How many years have they been operating without issue? Lets cancel all those registrations.

The weld is part of the kit and professionally done.

Another option is to order the upper column section unwelded, then press and pin a sleave below the pillow block. Submit a drawing for acceptance.

The weld is not on the column itself, but on the intermediate steering shaft. One end has a spline while the other is welded to a u-joint which attaches to the bottom of the column (either with a flange or a spline on the column - I can't recall). Yes, a 'drill and pin' solution would do, as long as the shaft goes deep enough into the u-joint.

Tony is rolling his eyes over the whole process. The New Brunswick-based automotive engineer who does the engineering inspection for Nova Scotia appears to be interested in wading in, hopefully on the side of rationality.

We are talking about the same section of steering shaft/column. Birkin's drawings show the ujoints as separate components to be assembled to the shaft:

http://birkindirect.com/docs/Group2RHD.pdf

Creative assembly by builder or cost cutting measure by Birkin?

The LHD car has the lower steering shaft in two pieces (so 3 u-joints in all) to get around the exhaust and other bits in the left hand side of the engine compartment. According to Tony, there were several areas where the correspondence between the kit and the documentation was loose at best, evidently due to docs not keeping up with evolution of the design.

Yes, the splined/pinch-bolted connections on the RHD car would have kept the inspectors happy.

So it is a cost cutting measure by Birkin, implemented at some point.

I'd contact Birkin, explain the situation, and request the correct parts if they can still produce them.

In contrast to Perry's happy tale in Alberta, Tony is still at it in Nova Scotia. He got a letter (or email) from the regisatrar saying he was OK except ... they are insisting upon rear side marker lights and have expanded upon the engineer's acceptance of the spare tire as protection for the fuel tank to demand installation of a rear bumper .... It looks close, but the process started last November.

I guess my own build will include side-marker lights and bumpers.

Had dinner at Tony's tonight - he finally got blessing of his rear bumper and marker lights - now he only needs paperwork from the province (title) to proceed with registration. Oh boy ...

Tony's a happy boy. He got the Province's blessing on Friday. He's just going through the circular registration and insurance process now (You know - to get insurance you need registration, but to get registered ....). He remarked (with some surprise) that the lady at the customer service counter was both knowledgable and helpful - he wasn't ready for that.

Right on

Been following this thread for about a while now as it applies. Glad to hear the process works.

Andrew

Tony is now driving his Birkin, with most of his time focussed on getting the MS fuel map right.

The catch 22 insurance v registration problem went away when the insurer would accept a copy of his registration application, rather than registration itself. The insurers then choked again when they discovered it was a new vehicle - they (Haggerty) only insure vehicles over 15 years old. When asked about how they insured things like Cobra replicas a solution was found: The car is a 2012 Birkin. The 'model' has been changed to a '1963 Lotus 7'. So it's now a '2012 Birkin 1963 lotus 7' .....

Tony also ended up paying extra tax to the province, because when he imported the bits the feds collected all taxes, whereas now they only collect the GST, with the province collecting the balance. Despite showing receipts for the total, the province made Tony pay the difference between HST and GST (because their computer wouldn't let them do otherwise) - so Tony will have to go back and recover that from the feds, who have probably already paid it to the province. Sometimes I blush to think that I was once a public servant, and proud of the way I did my job.