Moveable Moneypit and A Mountain of Paperwork

Sometimes, moving to California is a real pain in the ass. And I mean that in the negative sense. I had a bunch of work done on my car before I left, which is to be expected considering that it has nearly 200,000 miles on it. One of the things that was replaced was the timing belt. In order to get my car registered, I need to have a "Smog Check" done. This is very similiar to the emissions tests performed in both Oregon and Washington, only much more comprehensive.

My car barely passed the emissions test but failed on another arcane part of the test. Yes, the timing belt synchronization was slightly off. Apparently, California law (or is it regulation) stipulates that the difference between where the belt is and should be can be no more than 5 degrees, and mine was off by 10 degrees. The guys that owned the place I took the car to for the Smog Check said they could adjust the timing belt for an additional $35 dollars (and the Smog Check costs $60) but the adjustment would likely put my cars hydrocarbon output above the maximum allowed. He suggested the problem might be something like bad spark plugs, but since those were replaced recently, that's unlikely. What is more likely is that my catalytic converter needs to be replaced. So, I'm driving my car to a place in Woodland tomorrow to have the converter looked at. I'm not sure how much a new catalytic converter would cost, but I imagine it won't be cheap.

In other exciting car related news, getting my California driver's liscence hit a snag when I found out that the birth certificate that I've used for the last 31 years of my life is not an "official" certificate. So, I had to pay another $32 to have an "official" certificate mailed to me from Oregon. I'll get it in 10 - 14 days.

So yeah, no I remember why I hate dealing with stuff like this. Every time you turn around someone's taking a $20 to $30 dollar bite out of your savings to cover some fee for some piece of paperwork that you need.