2011_q3/2011_07_22_battery_corrosion

In the process of importing a car to MD I had the MD state vehicle safety inspection performed at Neubauer's Auto Repair in Ellicott City, MD. From prior experience this has generally been a good and thorough shop, albeit a bit expensive. In this case, I suspect they were in the right and conservatively followed the letter of the law, but I would like to put out there for the record some photos of a battery that failed the "battery corrosion" portion of the inspection. This wasn't the only item on the list and they would have happily corrected it for a very reasonable fee, but I just had to see it for myself.

On a separate note, they also failed my right rear side marker lamp and offered to replace the bulb over the phone when I was speaking with the service rep. Of course, I declined that because I would never pay a shop $80/hr to replace a burned out light bulb when I already had to take the car back to get new tires. Naturally, when I picked the car up the bulb was in fact working and the inspection sheet has "Int." written above and to the right of the original "R/R Sidemarker" annotation, which makes me extremely suspicious. If the mechanic observed it to be intermittent, why did they not offer to properly diagnose the wiring harness and bulb mounting, given that the bulb itself clearly still worked? I can't prove anything here, but it didn't make me happy and I will be raising the issue with both the owner of the company and the MD inspection authorities once I've completed the process.

For the curious, LDG Automotive has a decent summary of the inspection requirements.

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