[wagonman76]

First time I was pulled over was at night for no license plate light, hadn't gotten to put it on yet. Totally legit even though about 1 out of 3 vehicles I see has no functional plate light.

This time was yesterday, clear day on the freeway, packed with tourists. Was going within the legal range of speeds (55-70). State police pull me over.

They said the reason was because I didn't have a back bumper. Then they looked closer and saw that I still had my factory back bumper. They said it was a shady area and they could write me a ticket and let the judge decide, but they weren't going to because they were pretty interested in what I had done.

They said "so this used to be a Celebrity?" and I said it still is, nothing factory has been removed and everything is bolted on and can be removed. It is clearly obvious as you can see the whole car through the tail window but they checked the vin anyway. I told them the tail is solid and you can push the car around with it, which he did. They wondered what the purpose of the mods were and I told them the gas mileage increase I had been getting, which apples to apples, used to be 32 for a downstate trip on a nice day and now can get 40 for the same trip. Took a bit of explaining for them to understand, they didn't see how I could even have gotten 32 before doing any mods and said they didn't realize GM V6s could get that good of mileage. He asked about the grille block and wondered how the car didn't overheat with it (a lot of people ask that). I said maybe if I was in Arizona desert I might need the full grille but here it makes no noticeable difference in my engine temps. (Actually GM made a Celebrity VR which had some urethane moldings and a solid upper grille.) Both cops seemed sort of impressed and seemed to have no knowledge that your mpg could be increased at all.

Then they asked to look in the other side of the car (from passers by it probably looked like I had guns or drugs in the car). They wanted to know what the mpguino was and I explained how it worked, it read pulses from the speedo and injectors and gave a mpg readout, didn't actually change anything in how the car functions. I said it was similar to a $160 Scangauge but they had never heard of that either. They saw a piece of wire on my floor and said I must have disconnected something, I explained that it was just a test cable for a sensor for working on one of my other cars (it was a crank sensor test cable because that sensor is so buried behind the engine you can't get a tester back there).

I told them about the website and about Basjoos' Aerocivic (and the wild mpg increase from going all out on aeromods) because I can't take credit for coming up with the aeromods or mpguino myself.

I told them the shell is tied to the factory bumper with angle iron. And that if I had to, I could put it back to a stock Chevy Celebrity in an hour once I got home. They basically said have a good night. Maybe because I offered to change it back, they didn't say I had to do it.

I guess it was a matter of time. I've had probably 50 cops pass me in the last year and nobody has said there was anything wrong with it. At least they were friendly.

So I wonder what to do, maybe make a bumper out of light tubing (take a travel trailer bumper) and bolt it to the tail. If you think about it, there are several ways to not have a bumper as the immediate impact point. Take one of the many tourists with a rear mount cargo carrier, or rear mount bike carrier. No rear bumper there. How about one of the many pickups with snowplows? No front bumper there. And most of the vehicles these days have some pretty sorry excuse for a bumper as it is, gone are the days of solid steel bumpers like I have where you can bump something and get no damage.