Stolen truck found after 30 years

[Frankenchevy]

I live in San Diego County and have a CHP officer living in my neighborhood. He has told me they are going after people who have the Montana, South Dakota and Vermont tags on their cars. Vermont has recently, I have been told, stopped selling the Vermont titles and plates. What he told me, was that if you are in the military, then it is okay to have out of state plates, but if you driver's license is from California and you are a resident of California, your vehicle has to be registered in California. He said they are going to start aggressively pursuing these people. Just a wait and see, I guess.

Maybe. If you have a home in another state and that vehicle is registered there because it spends more than 50% of its time out of state, that is perfectly legit. They still have to have probable cause for the initial stop. An out of state plate is not sufficient.

 

[Frankenchevy]

You're not in CA either. It's a whole different animal with the strict regulations. If it were a pre-75 rig I would definitely say do whatever, but even then, if I recall correctly you still have to pass to get it registered, so there we fall back to having factory installed components, whether to pass as an original setup or having all of the modern bits and pieces which is even more stringent than the old stuff, just more readily available.

No inspection whatsoever on anything 1975 or older for gas or 1997 or older on diesel. I own an example of both.

 

[DoubleDingo]

I guess the question is if they considering this a change of ownership. That is the qualifying event for a smog in a non smog county.

I think it doesn't matter, especially in this instance, it's been gone for 30 years, is no longer CARB compliant, so to get it registered again, even in a smog-free-county, let alone the bay area where the OP shows they live, it's going to require every bit and piece to pass visual and sniffer, no matter if it's like a factory 80s square or a modified square with the modern fancy electronics.