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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

When an insurance company totals your car you can generally buy your car back from them and get a salvage title. This would seem like a decent opportunity given that an ignition switch is just a basic 3 or 4 position switch (especially on these cars!). So either replace it with some half-fitting generic switch(es) or just hotwire your car every time.

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> So either replace it with some half-fitting generic switch(es) or just hotwire your car every time.

Be careful to not develop bad habits if you do that.

When I was a in high school something went wrong with the key mechanism for our ignition switch. My dad was able to remove part of it leaving it so that you could shove a screwdriver in and turn the switch that way.

That worked great and so there was no hurry to actually get it fixed to work with the keys.

After a while we got out of the habit of taking the keys when we were going to drive somewhere.

Then one day I'm driving home, which was in a rural area in central California, and got a flat tire. The spare was in the trunk, which was locked. This was in the '70s so no cell phone to call for help. There weren't any houses in sight, just farm fields. The road I was on didn't get much traffic, so it could be hours before someone would drive by. And it was in the middle of the day in summer.

I had to walk home, get the keys, and walk back to the car to change the tire. It was very annoying.

Some places require a re-inspection, but those often don't care about much beyond brakes and lights and things (including the driver's window being able to roll down and the horn, often).

Do note that the salvage title does affect some things like resale/trade-in, but if you want to drive it, that's what you want.

The re-inspection in Minnesota specifically says that it's not a safety inspection. They just want to be sure you have receipts for everything you fixed on the car to prove that it wasn't rebuilt with stolen parts. Never made sense to me, but there you go.

Two times i bought back the salvage title for a car that was damaged but otherwise in good condition including a Mazda that had been hit by a deer and a Honda that I rolled. Funny enough, both of those cars got totaled again pretty quickly.

Don't you have to re-certify your car after it's been written off?

haha, pick your state:

Florida - Taylor Ray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5wt8FpNy10 "LS Miata ABANDONED NEIGHBORHOOD TESTING!" LS powered full racecar straight piped miata, has title, inspection was going in and getting a stamp.

Oklahoma - no inspections at all, straight piped work trucks with rusted out frames are the norm.

Kansas - Hoovies Garage https://youtu.be/ZlwjXhdNd3Y?t=433 "Why buying an old Shelby GT350 race car WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA" Full leaking fuel racecar with no speedo/lights/windows, inspector doesnt bother to even see it in person.

Utah - M539 Restorations https://youtu.be/_a9rCI2zfPM?t=524 "Buying & Fixing Broken BMW E46 M3 5200 Miles Away From Home - Project Salt Lake: Part 1" tire shop "inspection station", only interested in plugging in OBD to do emissions, doesnt bother to come out look at the car. Car is broken (wobbly wheel, etc) plus cant even pass ODB emissions, gets temp tag anyway.

In most states recertification is paying some administrative fee at the dmv without anyone even looking at the car.

Never understood the states with no safety inspection at the least. NC does both, emissions depend on county, and I don't see as many cars on the road that make me nervous to be around.

MN has neither. They did away with emissions tests...20 years ago? I don't think they've ever had a safety inspection, at least I don't remember it (I'm in my mid-50s), but maybe it was part of the emissions test at the time. Now I just fill out a quick form online every year for my new tabs and a week later get them in the mail and put them on.

Jeebus, I guess it contributes to traffic mortality many times more than (most of) Europe or Australia.

It's not terribly complicated nor costly. And if the only thing wrong with the car is the ignition switch it'll trivially pass the "brake and light adjustment" (CA) inspection.

Taking the cash and buying the car back at salvage value is a no-brainer in this situation.

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