THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602080041
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
INSPECTOR Al Lutz is on the job. He's working under the sexy poster gaze of Julie, the Snap-on Tool girl tacked to the wall above his workbench.
Squeezed into cut-off jean short shorts and a ripped tank ``T,'' Julie flashes her navel and an air ratchet.
Lutz, on the other hand, is zipped into a work jacket and pants, warm underwear and steel-toed boots. He's running his hands along a Pontiac Sunbird in the cold garage bay of a filling station off Holland Road in Virginia Beach. Gas, exhaust fumes and the smell of warm engine oil are in the air.
The Pontiac's up on the hydraulic lift. Lutz tilts his head back, and his eyes dart from this checkpoint to the next looking for holes in the floorboard, fuel leaks, a tight exhaust system. All OK. He moves to the outside, pries off a hubcap, pulls off a back wheel and then . . . grin-city.
``The brake shoe has to be 2/32 of an inch above the rivet,'' he says, looking pretty happy. ``This one is definitely not.''
Lutz is an automobile inspector for the official state inspection program of the Department of Virginia State Police. His OK can make or break a driver's day. A passed inspection means a car gets a new state sticker and is good to go for 12 more months. A Lutz thumbs-down means a rejection sticker and repairs before a car is legal to hit the road again.
He makes no secret of the pleasure it gives him to pull badly maintained cars out of traffic. Some people want to drive their vehicles until they come apart.
``That's scary to me. I got friends and family out there,'' he says.
The Pontiac's driver let his brake pads go a little too long.
Could be worse.
``Sometimes I'll pull a tire off and the brakes fall off,'' Lutz says, a grease-stained palm stretched out as if to ask, ``Can you believe it?'' The mechanic's gray eyes blink over the tops of his horn-rimmed Ben Franklins, half-glasses that make him look like a professor on loan to the Shipps Corner Exxon.
Lutz, 57, retired from the Navy in 1977. He's been inspecting cars ever since. On most makes and models, he can finish in about 20 minutes.
That's after he finds headlight switches, hood releases and twists and turns foreign car makers throw into engines like they're trying to set him up.
He's got to be nice when he explains that even though only the dog sits in the passenger seat, it has to have a working safety belt. He has to be tactful when he tells Harry Homeowner he botched up the do-it-yourself job on his car. And if Harry denies he did it, he's got to look like he believes him.
Lutz has to pretend to be stupid much of the time.
``People will scratch off rejection stickers and sneak in here to try again,'' he says. ``You can always see a little bit left on the window. And they'll tell you it's not their car. It's their wife's or their daughter's.''
Sure. He takes it all with a grain of salt.
But the thing that makes him and his manager crazy is when people complain about needing their headlights adjusted.
``You would not believe the stink that causes,'' said Meyers, pointing at a headlight adjustor, a machine on wheels. ``This is something people have a problem with. They feel as though it's a racket.''
Road vibrations throw headlights off center. Making sure both are pointed in the right direction seems reasonable. But some drivers want to feel their way around in the dark.
``People will say I just got it done last year,'' says Lutz, shaking his head.
The inspection program's obviously not popular with drivers who don't want to be told what to do with their cars. Many take theirs in for a check-up only once a year, to plop down 10 bucks and hope they get the sticker.
The idea sends chills up the Lutz spine.
``I had a car come in here, a guy with a Volvo with all the bells and whistles. The customer said he had a little pull in the front end. The brakes were steel against steel,'' he recalled, eyes really popping over the tops of his glasses this time.
And, boy, the reaction if he tells them they've got a problem.
They get mad. They cry.
Cry?
``Oh, yeah,'' says Chris Meyers, manager of the station. ``That rejection sticker will make them cry. To some people a car is an extension of themselves. They wash it. They wax it. They keep it clean. They're embarrassed if you tell them something's wrong with it.''
Stressful for car owners. Stressful for inspectors.
``A lot of people don't understand being a state inspector and the pressures the public puts on a state inspector,'' says Meyers.
It starts when cars pull up.
``Everybody waits till the end of the month,'' Meyers says. Customers don't see that. They see empty bays and want their inspection. Now.
Then there's the pressure to do the job right. State troopers pop in unannounced in unmarked cars just to see how Lutz is doing.
But it's hard to sneak up on a guy as vigilant as Al Lutz. After almost 20 years on the job, inspector Lutz can see the rough cars coming.
``You can tell when you drive them in. It's an effort to get them in the bay. And by the end, you've got a grocery list of what's wrong with the vehicle,'' Lutz says.
And to top it off, the owners aren't grateful. First thing they want to know is, ``Well, how much is this going to cost me?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
At Shipps Corner Exxon, state inspector Al Lutz gives an annual
thumbs up or down to our cars.
by CNB