Moving to Northern Virginia soon. Mind answering some questions?
 

So I will be moving to Northern Virginia from California next month and have been looking for a twin to pick up since I lost mine due to family complications. I found this one on Craigslist https://fredericksburg.craigslist.or...896279524.html and it seems like it has the SBD turbo kit. Being from the land of F.U. emission laws I was wonder how Va is on smoging a modified car.

I'm in Fairfax. If it doesn't throw any CEL codes it'll pass. They literally just plug in to your OBD2 port. No sniffer or anything.

Oh that makes me so happy thank you. Is there any reputable local tuners in the area?

Actually the state does not require emissions testing, only NoVa counties. But it's OBD only

Correct, dang NoVA, some people will "garage" their car in southern counties (Fredericksburg etc) to not have to get emissions but live in NoVA, did that with an old Del Sol I had for a brief period of time. Don't forget your safety inspection also, that's state wide, just make sure all lights are working, driver's side window goes up and down, and depending where you go, that's enough, other places will look at bushings, brakes, tires, etc, just to find a reason to fail you to make a buck.:bellyroll:

which is of course clearly illegal not only because you avoid emission inspections, but also you do not pay property tax in the jurisdiction where you are supposed to pay it.

PTuning in Manassas, Pure Automotive up in Maryland, and MoTo East in Pennsylvania.

man I dream of moving to Cali and here you are moving away from Cali. I'll gladly take any smog restrictions over living here..

Haha yeah Cali is pretty great. I'm sad toeave but I'm moving closer to family and school.

Yeah, Virginia isn't exactly what I would consider a great place to live.

How come?

I like living in Va, I mean in NoVa, I am not sure if I would like living in RoVa very much ;).

There are many things you may like or dislike in Va, I don't like how it is run politically (but let's not go there), a Californian may not like the weather, and so on.

But here are some Va facts related to cars and driving

Watch your speed. Driving 80 or more, or 20 or more above the limit, is automatically reckless driving. It may get reduced to "improper driving" in court, but that's not guaranteed.

Watch your speed carefully in certain areas, mostly rural, like between Shenandoah and NoVa, speed enforcement may be very strict.

You cannot use radar detectors or jammers, you can't even have one in the car.

There are no speed cameras (which I think is not good, I'd happily accept speed cameras in residential zones in exchange for lifting this idiotic automatic reckless speeding thing).

You generally may use handheld cell phone while driving (but not in DC or, I think, in MD - you will probably go there quite often when living in NoVa). Some other traffic laws differ between VA, DC and MD: the automatic 80 mph reckless driving of course is VA specific. Left turn on red from one-way road into another one-way road is allowed in VA and MD, but not in DC. MD and DC have speed cameras. Make sure that your registration renewal is not overdue when going to DC, they are super strict about it. Also, when parking in DC carefully read all signs on the block. Especially watch for rush hour no-parking signs, these are strictly enforced, fines are high and towing away frequent. Fighting a parking ticket in DC is very hard.

Back to VA: road design and traffic engineering may be, well surprising. There may be no superelevation on fast corners. Don't trust "recommended speed" signs, I know corners with recommended speed 25 that can be easily taken at 45, and others with recommended 25 which feel tight at 20.

In winter the temperature often hovers around freezing, which is very bad for the pavement. Expect many potholes late in winter and throughout spring.

There will be snow every now and then, though usually it is removed from roads quite quickly, and there is little traffic then because most people freak out and cease driving.

Traffic in NoVa and DC area in general is pretty bad. Some highways are always bad, other are unpredictable. There is quite a lot of HOV and HOT lanes. Some are HOV/HOT-2, some are -3. You'll need EZpass to pay tolls in HOT lanes on 95 and 495. If you are planning to go HOV-3 (unlikely in a twin...) on these HOT lanes, you need a special EZpass Flex which you can only get from VA, not from other states (EZpass systems works in much of the Northeast)

Wow I really appreciate you taking the time to type this all out. I'm moving to McLean so I'm not sure where exactly that's considered. :thanks:

I second mdm's comment about the traffic engineering, which is really the worst car related thing about the state other than the ripoff personal property taxes.


Highway entrances and exits right before tunnels that create choke points. Lights coming off of highway exits that stay red so long that cars literally start building up to the point where they're stopped going onto the highway. A general lack of commitment to keeping the infrastructure built up enough to support the amount of traffic. I had heard that Raleigh and NC State are one of the foremost hubs for this kind of study, and it surprises me that it hasn't made it up to even Southern Virginia. From what people have told me, this state's infrastructure plans can pretty much be summed up by cracking a civil engineering textbook and going to the section of examples of things you don't do.


For all your trouble dealing with all of this, they'll send you a bill for well over $1000 for the "privilege" of driving a $40,000 car in Virginia for a year. This bill will come back next year for the depreciated value, which will still be over a grand. This kind of begs the question where all of that money is going, because it certainly isn't into the roads.