My Jeep was a '60 model CJ5 with dual rear wheels, channel iron front bumper and Konig PTO winch.
So when it hit the wall, it was not as hard a jolt as some trees or stumps I had hit.
This had to be about 1972 or so, and there was no emissions testing done. I don't think that Cats had come out yet.
Nowhere in my area I know of had the rollers. They all had a low drive up platform with four traction pads that could move.
They were hooked to some liquid indicators that measured how much braking action each wheel produced.
In what someone had to think was a time saving idea, the headlight aim tester was mounted on a rail that ran across the front of the brake tester.
You pulled up on the brake tester, slammed on the brakes. Then got out and rolled the headlight tester from one side to the other checking the headlight aiming.
Of course that meant that the headlight tester was the first thing to go when my Jeep went completely thorough the brake tester.
It varied from place to place, but some things they would adjust or fix for you. Never saw anyone adjust brakes, but most of them would adjust the headlights.
Problem with that was, whoever wrote the specs for headlight aiming, apparently did not do any nighttime driving.
Once they adjusted them, your high beams would not reach half as far as the old low beams did.
And you could pretty much forget about the low beams.
My father's LTD was set just about perfect from the factory. Great range without blinding any oncoming traffic.
The night before his first inspection, I parked the car in the driveway, marked a spot on the concrete where the front of the front bumper was, and drew circles on the garage door in pencil where the high and low beams hit.
After the inspection, I just set them back.
That worked fine for a couple of inspections. Then, one year, I screwed up. I missed the mark on the concrete and parked too close.
He didn't drive at night for a few days, then we started up the country one morning before daylight.
It was interesting. On low beams, folks kept begging for dims, and on high beam, we could look for coons in the tops of the pine trees alongside the road.
One poor semi drive kept asking, so my father flashed the brights at him to let him know we were on dims, and it lit him up in the cab. You could see him perfectly when he threw his arm up to block out the light.
I reset them that night.
The whole inspection finally crashed and burned due to the normal incompentance and corruption you get when government tries to do something like that.
Towards the end, there were some places in town that would fake a problem so they could get the job of fixing it, and others, a "donation" in addition to the regular fee would guarantee you would pass.
I heard that the going rate was $50.
Don't know for sure, because I actually never did that.
I kept my equipment up, and since that Jeep would take me places I couldn't walk out of, it was darn well as perfect as I could make it.
The only reason I had to pick and choose my inspection spots was the E-brake. Some folks would try to make trouble about it not stopping the Jeep.
I never really figured out what the heck it was for really.
It might help hold it on a hill when stopped, but there was no way it could actually stop the Jeep.
One inspector got going across the parking lot about 25 and hauled up on the handle for all he was worth.
The only thing that happened, was a loud grinding noise between the seats, and a cloud of awful smelling smoke rising up through the cracks as mud, grass, bugs, and who knows what all that had collected in the drum got ground up and burned from the friction.
He didn't try that again.....
