Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Ok just to let you in a on a little hint - Adam has a Stagea in our shop that we lodged a very long time ago with Dotars.

He has just had a new baby and needed a station wagon so we bought one and shipped it - now this is for him personally and his wife is a very tough woman (being nice here). He has been getting no end of grief about the time it has taken to comply the car from his wife - so he especially understands your frustration.

The worst thing that anyone can do is call DOTARS and give them the vin on their car and say it is taking too long, as this makes them look at your vin and if they are visiting Sydney or wherever the compliance shop is they will stop in and check the car. Now if they find one thing that does not comply on the car (it could be a missing seatbelt tag or say Nismo taillights) they will hold the car up for at least 6 weeks while they go through the paperwork response from the RAWS shop (this is referred to as DI - discussion item). Other things cause DI's such as using a fullstop in the wrong place (yes that simple) and some VIS (vehicle inspection certificates) are 8 + pages long it is more than frustrating for me personally as I do 80% of our paperwork. I often spend more time fixing up a DI that actually complying a car - just to make DOTARS happy.

We all know minor things make ZERO difference in the real world but these guys are like Highway Patrol cops and seem to get off on slowing things down. I prefer to get cars in and out quick as that is how we make money - the longer a car sits the less space we have to work and in practice the less money we make.

If one of the DOTARS staff goes on Holidays his / her work just piles up.

Perfect example - we had 13 cars sitting in bonded storage @$20 per day due to the fact we were unable to get VIA's from the second week of Dec to the 1st week of Feb. Why might you ask ? Well they had the majority of their staff off on annual leave and ran a skeleton staff just to get the VICS processed. By the way we paid the $260 per day not the clients as we try to be fair with everybody.

Yes I called to ask what was happening and was told "the rules state you can't ship the car until you get the VIA", which is correct but if you sit a car on the wharf in Japan you will also accumulate storage fees.

It is a calculated risk if you ship prior to getting the VIA but 90% of the time it works ok.

I hope this explains things a little better.

Haha sounds like a shit of a job!
These DOTARS people sound like they don't mess around and do seem worse than the defect police.

I haven't bothered calling DOTARS because as Kristian said the people who call them seem to wait the longest.

Thanks for being so transparent about what's been going on and taking the time to reply in here.

I understand where Dodgyimports is coming from, but taking shortcuts is part of the reason why shit cars make it to our shores in the first place. Omission of repairs etc and then for sale at Edward Lee's as mint condition

yes - massive amount of sarcasm in my post.

it's disgusting to see cases like this - and frustrating to see that those whose jobs are to manage and regulate this area continue to ignore this issue - all the while they make things harder for the good guys too. is there ANYTHING they ARE getting right?

yes - massive amount of sarcasm in my post.

it's disgusting to see cases like this - and frustrating to see that those whose jobs are to manage and regulate this area continue to ignore this issue - all the while they make things harder for the good guys too. is there ANYTHING they ARE getting right?

Lol, sorry Dodgy, my sarcasm detector was not working yesterday!

Any more info on yours?

Yeah I spoke with them on Thursday and was told fri or mon it should be ready. Haven't heard a word yet although i am in Japan so not sure if this is barring calls. I know don't believe it has anything to do with dotars delays. It's more to do with workshops taking more cars than they can handle!

Edited by BigWillieStyles

Yeah I spoke with them on Thursday and was told fri or mon it should be ready. Haven't heard a word yet although i am in Japan so not sure if this is barring calls. I know don't believe it has anything to do with dotars delays. It's more to do with workshops taking more cars than they can handle!

They always blame DOTARS if they cant keep up of if there plate alocation has run out.

Seems like a few of us are all having the same delays so it will probably be a huge holdup with DOTARS.

But has anyone had a car arrive in the last 3 months and have it pass compliance easily?

My car arrived in Sydney on the 1st of December & next week will pass the 5 month mark for total time spent importing.

must be absolutely spewin !

although no alternative, you guys have patience that's for certain.

when you cant do anything about it then you cant waste energy on emotion

did you not got any info on timeframe when doing business with importers?

meaning is this common this wait and see how long it takes. Most govt agency's have SLA's

I know of the downsizing of all government departments but this is beyond belief.

most departments have not been slashed yet

Approved vehicles link

RAWS site says it can take up to 20 days (1month)

So what has DotaRS said about their timeframe/delay ?

Complaints to [email protected]

Edited by Sinista32

When it arrived I was originally given a time frame of about 2-3 weeks normally. After a month passed I followed up and was told it would be another week. Then after that it would be a couple of weeks. Next time frame was that it would be about a month and most recent was that it would be last week.

Most of my family and friends have just given up asking when I get my car because I keep telling them "next week"

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Yes that’s what im trying to decide. Should I do stock gtt box or enclosed or open pod. 
    • Also, I note OP is in Melbourne, which begs the question... are you aware of how illegal your car will be with a turbo, and intercooler and any sort of filter change? I don't know how you can get past the "2 intake mods" "rule" that seems to exist in Vic. Fully engineered might or might not get you there.
    • If you have a turbo... then the ducting holes I used to feed the pod are not available because your intercooler likely uses them. If you have an intercooler, your IAT's are going to be goverened by how good your intercooler setup is. I'm yet to really see anyone check IAT with a snorkel/boxed pod/proper CAI versus and unshielded pod. It would be interesting! But I suspect that the differences would not be so noticeable as if you were N/A as the intercooler is where the air is being cooled.. and out in front where the FMIC would be is a pretty good spot for it.. When I was turbo I pushed the stock GTT box as far as I could and made some pretty good power out of it, and noticed on the street I never made the same power/boost. Then I did a before and after run with a pod filter versus the box and picked up about 9PSI from the same boost duty cycle and about 50KW instantly. I never ran the stock box again, and recently removed it for my N/A setup. The box is restrictive to a degree - Even with the V8 setup I noticed I picked up power by removing the box completely, so punching holes from the bottom of it to get air from the passenger guard *helps* but the most effective one in my case was simply having the ducts, a pod, and no box around it. In my experience, *more* air was better than cold air. The air (with ducts) will be cooled off as you start moving, and especially if you start moving fast (a race track). It actually moves around quite a bit as you can see.  
    • Well you could certainly buy or build an enclosure for a pod in that corner of the bay. It is absolutely vital that there is a nice big opening to let cold air in to it from the front or underside, otherwise it will just pull air in around the edges from the bay, and if that air is hot, you gain nothing from enclosing the pod. There is lots of good evidence around (including on here, see posts by @Kinkstaah for example) showing that pods pulling hot air from the bay is only a problem when you're static or slow in traffic, and that as soon as you get the car up and moving the air being grabbed by the pod cools down. Although that will obviously vary from car to car, whether there is a flow of cold air to the pod or if it all has to come through the radiator area, etc etc. Obviously, the whole exercise requires as much thought as anything else does. Doing the lazy thing will often end up being the dumb thing. The stock GTT airbox has a cold air snorkel to feed it from over the radiator. Shows that Nissan were thinking. The GT airbox is upside down compared to the turbo one, yeah? Inlet at the bottom, AFM/exit on the lid? That might make it harder to route the turbo inlet pipe using the GT airbox than a turbo one. That would probably be the main reason I'd consider not using it, not that it is too small and restrictive. I'm looking at a photo of one now and the inlet opening seems nice and large. Also seems to have the same type of snorkel that the turbo one has. Maybe all that's required is to make a less restrictive snorkel/cold air inlet, perhaps by punching down through the guard like I did.
    • Also seen this as an option 
×
×
  • Create New...