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Great reads and goes to show there are some very decent cops out there. Knowing many on a personal side and the shenanigan going ons outside of their environment, the gearhead cops are generally forgiving if you don't BS, show respect and it might help you out.
Without boring all with many of these types of stories, one that sticks in my head was about a night out in my built S-zuki GSXR. The bike was very much borderline on being legal... stage 4 Yoshimura, very near slicks, etc. and actually not in most states. Anyhow after passing thru THREE sperate radar traps late at night and yes I'll admit to many MPH over the posted and my giveaway were hard handfulls on the binders whenever my detector wired to the helmet went off. You see (er - not) the indicators on the detector are useless at speed because the focus is on the road ahead and the brain reacts faster to an audio warning. Often I would still get pulled over and the cop would check the bike out and clearly state was unable to get a locked reading because of the rapid deceleration and give me a verbal behave.
Well that night, I wasn't pulled over after passing the three other traps but the fourth, a state trooper just wanted to advise me of burn't out tail lamp! Holy sheetz I told him and sincerely thanked him because that in itself is a bad situation for my safety. I further explained I had passed three other speed traps and nobody bothered to warn me.
So he ask, can you fix it or have a spare bulb? I told him no but it uses a standard automotive type whatever.. so he goes to his trunk, puts on a pair of deerskin gloves, removes a bulb from HIS squad tail light! Now the fun part - that bike was rigged with some no-no's and one in particular was a remote flip down plate and partially attached to the hinge bracket to the tail-light housing. It was an 'oh well' at this point and proceeded to flip down the plate and trick stuff and get to the bulb for replacement. The cop sort of helped and observed. Not many words were exchanged but I thanked him again and offered him to follow me to the next exit to a late night gas station and get a bulb for his car. He said no thanks but I insisted and bought him a cup of jo and donut... all good.
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