Trabi/IFA Chat Forum

You will need to fill out forms proving the exemptions for DOT and EPA standards. You will need supporting documents and proof of ownership. You should have the undercarriage cleaned. Check out this website: http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/basic_trade/importing_car.xml
It sounds tough but it's not that bad. 1400 sounds pretty good. I wish I could have done that with my Wartburgs.
Jeff

No mud under this car. This Kippeinrichtung is ridiculous. Its clear that this thing pre-dates safety laws and the German TUV. Handy though, so long as you are willing to risk death by Trabi.

Do the EPA 3520-1 and NHTSA HS-7 need to be filled out in advance when dropping off the car or do I provide them to customs when they are clearing it?

The latest on the story of my Trabi: I dropped it off in Bremerhaven before I left the fatherland. It is quite a huge operation they have there and it is a nice city. I wish I could have spent more time there but I was on a tight schedule. It was hard to say goodbye to it; I'd been living in it for the past week and a half.

I flew home and took the paperwork to the customs office prior to picking up the car. With the documentation I had, they spent 10 minutes doing paperwork and I had everything filled out and stamped. They even did the EPA 3520-1 and HS-7 for me.

At the port, with the customs paperwork in hand there was no trouble picking up the car and driving off. Only thing left to do is register it here.

Not to hyjack your thread...

I asked this same question in a previous thread. My question is why would you need to raise the side of the car at a 45 degree angle? What benefit would that do you at working on the underside of the car or the brakes ? What am I missing?

The other day I put mine on 4 jackstands so I could sandblast the rims and have new tires fitted. I could not get a jack under the rear leaf spring because the exhaust pipe was blocking the center of the spring. That's how I have always raised the rear end of my Yugo because it has a transverse rear leaf spring as well. I suppose it would be safe to place a jack under the engine cradle if I wanted to raise the front end off the ground?

I placed a floor back under the support beam below the doors in the center. Raised one side up, placed two jacks stands below the holes where the jack fits into.

I somewhat squashed a section on the passenger side. So perhaps this is not a good idea.

I'm thinking of building a bar out of 1/4" thick angle iron and drilling two holes so I can insert bolts/nuts through the jackstand holes. That way the angle iron would distribute the weight evenly. I would probably have to build two (one for each side) since I couldn't remove it once I sat the car on the ground.

Any other ideas?

The Kippeinrichtung is of limited use, I think, because I wouldn't want to work on the brakes or many other parts of the car at that angle or height. The reason I used it is because it was the best thing I had at the time to get under the car to clean and inspect it before it's boat ride. Other uses I can think of are exhaust replacement or maybe doing limited drive axle work. Might be handy for other stuff, but they escape me.

The steel in these things is cheap, thin and Russian. That means be careful about applying force. The Kippeinrichtung uses two pivoting stands that grab onto the jack points on one side and the lift grabs the front point on the other side. If you look in the second picture you'll see the rear one. They have a pin the size of the jack point hole that supports the weight, that slides through holes in a channel. Below the channel is another pipe welded in so you can use it to stick in the car jack to lift and get the car high enough to get the tripod under it. Hard to explain without having the thing in front of us.

When I do make a set of stands for my car, they will basically look like rally car jack stands but with the pin extended out farther to grab with a floor jack. A short piece of 2x4 will do the job of spreading out the force and not hurt anything in the mean time until I get around to it.