Practically Classics Forum

A very slight oil stain by a gasket on the back axle (If the axle hadn't been so clean you wouldn't have seen it) and all we had to do was tighten the bolt a tiny fraction and we got the MOT. It was really a case of sour grapes, as if you saw the cr*p that the proprietor was driving, you'd never credit that they could have an MOT. At that time, the proprietor was a nice enough bloke but his son (Who is now the proprietor), who did the MOT, is a strange one and was just looking for an excuse to fail it. It was a one off, as the place who normally do my MOTs couldn't fit me in because their mother had just died. I am not saying they are slack but they interpret the rules wisely rather than foolishly.

Having read that lot my tester's a saint. (The Midget passed today further elevating his standing in my book). My last faliure was on an early Mondeo where the unidirectional tyres were fitted the wrong way round, this was the first time I'd come across them it being the first car under 5 years old I'd owned., They'd been fitted by a well known tyre depot, I reckon they'd never come across them either.

my cousin was an mot tester nr bath & the bosses brother brought in a car with stickers covering the windscreen which were obstucting the view so he failed it & told the guy to clean them off & come back in an hour.. guy got shirty & reported him to the boss.. a few weeks later he was unemployed.

First time I MoTed my first Allegro, it failed on the hazard lights not working. When my mechanic went to pick it up, he pointed out that the switch with the red light & triangle was the one the tester should have used, rather than the one we'd wired up as an ignition cut-off... on the opposite side of the dash! (poor man's anti-theft device) A pass was issued forthwith.

arceye wrote:I had a rover p6 fail because its "sills" were bolted on and not welded :roll:
Even a return trip with the workshop manual showing them to be a bolt on cover panel would'nt change the fellas mind either :(

My P6 once because I hadn't replaced one of the cover sills after doing some welding. He could see that the other one was just bolted on, and could actually see that the sill structure was solid while it would normally be hidden, but still insisted that the cover had to be present. After a quick trip home it passed, but I haven't used that garage again.

Ay up!

My first car (Citroen BX 14E) failed its test once because of a non-working handbrake. The pillock was testing the rear wheels, despite their being a lack of any handbrake mech on them. When I pointed out the cables to the fronts, he said he thought they were "summat to do wi' t'bleed system!" but agreed to re-test and she passed. Presumably he thought only Saabs had front wheel handbrakes?

Two weeks later I discovered that the rear brakes were seized almost solid but still exerted sufficient force to pass!

I've had a fail for wndscreen wipers not being fast enough (despite me having driven to the test centre in torrential rain)

And a mate had his old Merc fail for not having working indicators. When he insisted that they did work (and showed the tester), the tester eventually admitted he couldn't work out how to work them - you move a ring on the steering wheel!

Xantia-nut wrote:Ay up!

My first car (Citroen BX 14E) failed its test once because of a non-working handbrake. The pillock was testing the rear wheels, despite their being a lack of any handbrake mech on them. When I pointed out the cables to the fronts, he said he thought they were "summat to do wi' t'bleed system!" but agreed to re-test and she passed. Presumably he thought only Saabs had front wheel handbrakes?

Two weeks later I discovered that the rear brakes were seized almost solid but still exerted sufficient force to pass!

Well...i never knew that...

My first employer was Subaru (International Motors) and yes, the then-current L series and earlier, late '70s and on, cars had the parking brake operating on the front too. Fortunately, the tester employed on the premises knew this.

Getting the thing to work on cars that had strayed from the dealer network and been brought back in by new owners desperate to achieve a working parking brake could be tricky, as the correct way to set the linkages up was to disconnect them from the calipers, wind the adjustment right up on the pistons and then fit the ends of the cable to the levers but even people who'd had experience on Alfasuds (front wheel parking brakes on those too) didn't seem to be able to complete this - admittedly a touch counter-intuitive - procedure, hence we had plenty of cables to set up during an average week.
To complicate things further, even the FWD-only Scoobies had a "hill holder" that was intended to prevent rolling back at junctions when the clutch was down and that would mask a poorly sorted parking brake mechanism beautifully.

Ay up!

I did a little bit of work for a Citroen specialist a few years ago and one of his best little earners was Kwik-Fit. If anyone had any front brake replacement work done there, the mechanic would push the pistons back in using a socking great G cramp, completely ruining the self-adjuster mechanism. Result - pair of replacement front calipers required. Alf, the boss, never said owt - he got paid good money for sorting 'em but eventually the depot must have realised and either dismissed the fool or re-trained him. Hopefully as a tea-maker....