Aust Quar service.. problems..

[ozpont]

   Just had a call from a Melbourne owner.. of a freshly imported Chevelle.. still being held in bond..     
  He needs a hood.. ie bonnet...
 
     Apparently.. AQIS.. (Quarantine)  has removed the bonnet from this car.. and has impounded the hood ... charging bond and wants him to pay for the hoods disposal.
    He stated  its a factory steel hood with a fibreglass cowl built.. just how he brought it.....sealed  painted etc..

   Reason.. an AQIS employee suspected asbestos may have been used in the construction of the Cowl hump.. & they now now have some kind of sniffer device that can detect various compounds.
   Apparently the rest of the car has had repairs and bondo in it...... they're not wanting to talk about that..... just the hood.
   
    If its totally factual....which I feel it was from discussing various points with the caller... it may not be long before  you need  certification of asbestos free materials now on all imported components..??  including car parts...? ... If so...Corvette owners better watch out ....
   
   Anybody ever heard of this happening to date..??

[69DirtyRat]

How ridicules! Just more morons trying to justify there jobs!

[us2oz]

It  really does sound to me like there is more to this story as quarantine officers are,from my experience,fairly generous in what they consider to be a concern and particularly with classic vehicles as most generally concede that making a 30-40 year old vehicle totally contaminant free is virtually impossible and as many of the cars and boats that i import are either constructed of fiberglass or other composite materials I can honestly say I've never seen an AQUIS officer so much as even mention asbestos.
Having said that I guess if the fiberglass was of such poor quality that the matting was exposed it would be feasible that an over zealous AQUIS inspector would be within his rights to knock it back.
Most of the time these problems occur when the owner or the owners agent is not present during the inspection so it's very easy for the officer to just order cleaning rather than spending time surveying the vehicle,I stay with every officer to inspect every vehicle and 80% of my vehicles pass on 1 st inspection.
The "under bond" movement of the vehicle only refers to allowing the container to be moved from the port and then unloaded into a AQUIS controlled area and does not in itself incur any costs,those are at the discretion of the warehouse at which the vehicle is being stored and most warehouses give you a reasonable period of storage at no cost and if the"offending"hood is now removed from the vehicle then the vehicle should now be eligible for release  on a second inspection so dont know why they would now still want the entire car?
The other issue could be that if the cowl hood was not listed as a modification on the import approval then it is technically an illegal import as no chevelle I know of came with a fiberglass cowl hood ex factory!
Once again,whatever the issue it is another reminder of the pitfalls of importing vehicles
from OS as many thing can go wrong and you rely on so many people for safe passage of your goods and the red tape is definitely increasing so people really need to think very hard before buying OS there is just so much out of any one persons control!

[ozpont]

Further onto this.. the owner/importer as had the hood held.. the car released. AQIS is has apparently given the owner the choice of the car stays or the hood comes off.   So the owner is now on the hunt for a replacement hood. 
   I too never had problems with the AQIS guys.. infact just the opposite...while they were in Wollongong..  .. but...but up in Sydney.. I lost faith in them... as  STUPID instances too often occurred of cars passing that were obviously not looked at.. while others were sent to be "cleaned" which .. I suspect were sent for other reasons ....