Smog Test

I went to get my smog test. $39.99

I went to my normal guy, Joe who has been doing my smog testing for years. He and a guy named Mike aka Shorty (cause he’s about 4 foot nothing) used to do it in the 90’s when I had our Olds Cutlass and on the truck. They had a shop in Hemet. They split up and Joe moved his place to San Jacinto.

So every two years, I go see Joe. Well, Joe’s machine broke and it’ll cost over $30K to replace it. He says then in 2012, the laws change so he’ll need to put another $50k into the business for udated equipment. He says he makes less than $20 per car, so he would have to do over 4000 cars just to pay for the equipment, and that’s not counting the rest of his overhead.

So now, Joe no longer does smog testing. He sent me to Kurt at Hurley’s. Kurt is a guy I worked with at the PD’s brother in law.

Kurt says that he is a smog repair station and I need to go to a test only place to get the test done and he can’t recommend anyone, but since I had been with Joe so long, had I seen Shorty’s place.

So I went to Shorty’s which is called Juan’s Test Only Smog Station. I almost died. I had to go into a dry cleaners, Juan’s, to set up the test, then drive around back. There was Mike/ Shorty right there.

They had a garage around back of the dry cleaners. Juan was the original owner of the dry cleaners and he and Shorty partnered in the smog testing. Shorty bought out Juan and now he and his daughter run the dry cleaners and the smog place.

Shorty was wearing a shirt that said “if it has wheels or a skirt, I can’t afford it.”

So I got my smog test done. Now I gotta pay DMV fees and I’ll be legal.