I think you should name that garage so we can all avoid it.

How did you get round the reversing lights being on when they shouldn't problem?

Where I’m at annual inspection really comes down to meeting pollution requirements. The test is nothing but a computer with connector to the OBD port and it reads what the car tells it while you’re idling. If your car fails that test twice you’re only required to spend up to $250 at a licensed ‘special’ mechanic towards getting it to pass. There’s a form which they have to sign, and it doesn’t even specify what was done. Most of the mechanics will happily sell you their signature and send you on your way. In most cases that’s probably cheaper than fixing the issue but still.

Ours is much more than that, it is a safety check and includes almost all of the vehicle. The full testers manual is https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-private-passenger-and-light-commercial-vehicles which shows how to test and what is a pass, fail or advisory. Although emissions are part of it, they aren't done through OBD but by putting a probe up the exhaust and measuring the emissions. It can be a bit of a pain but it at least means that you are told about rusted brake pipes or fuel lines before they start to leak and anything else that you may not have noticed but could be dangerous.

Right.

Now I am speaking for my local town and not the entire USofA but I don’t think any municipality in this country has anything even half what’s involved for the MOT. That doesn’t mean every other car is belching black smoke and running on failed shocks. It’s not like that at all. :)

I'm not knocking it but I've imported 30-40 vehicles from the US and found things like track rod ends that have so much slack the car could barely be kept in a straight line (and one that was so bad the track rod actually fell off!). There's been threads on the other side where people have said that they've lost all their brake fluid because one of the short steel pipes at the back has rusted through. These are things that the MoT test would pick up on before they became dangerous. That's what it is, it's a safety test. The object of it is to make sure the vehicle isn't a danger to the driver or anyone else. Originally it was almost solely brakes, lights and steering but other things have been added over the years so seatbelts (driver safety in event of an accident) and body/chassis structure were added (Will it fall apart on you? Will the jagged edges of rusted bodywork rip a pedestrian apart when you hit them?) and exhaust (will it gas you while you are driving along).

I agree that there are some testers that seem to use it as some sort of power trip or will try to make the rules up as they go along if they don't like the look of you, but mainly it's a pretty good indicator of the state of a car and how well it has been looked after. You can also check the MoT history online for a car so you can see what it has needed in the past. If a car goes in and has a number of advisories (things that it will still pass the test but will need attention soon) and you see the same advisories the following year, you know the owner doesn't really care about it.

I spied a 1990 Ford F250 in Texas that had such a rotten cab when you sat inside the seat would sink through the non existent floor, it was a deathtrap on wheels and he used it as a daily!!

Brake lines were thinner than a lepers pubes too

I'd love to know how many car accidents in America are caused by lack lustre safety regulations...

some areas of America are more reasonable lol

The best one I've seen was a customised Harley Davidson we imported. It had been customised to the point where it had no front brake and, as we all should know, it is the front brakes that do the stopping. At anything over walking pace, if you applied the brakes, all that happened was weight transfer shifted the mass to the, unbraked, front wheel while allowing the rear wheel to lock up so you carried on at exactly the same speed as you had been travelling at. It was fully road registered and legal to use in the US but had to be re-engineered to incorporate a front disc brake to get it road legal here. Having imported a few as container fillers and ridden them, I don't like Harleys anyway, but that thing was a deathtrap.

In Ireland we have the infamous NCT test, operated on contract by some Spanish company, Applus, who seem to make up new reasons to fail a car test.

This year I took the P38 for the test and it failed because the tester couldn't read the chassis number behind the front wheel. So I took it to the guy who does bigger suspension types jobs on the vehicle and asked him if he could clean the underseal off it so it could be read. He got a wire brush and gave it a rub, but said it was easily legible. I, unfortunately, didn't get down to have a butchers and took his word.

When I returned, after three weeks trying to get an appointment, the tester took the vehicle back into the garage, a big warehouse with 5 lanes for testing cars, and came back out 20 minutes later and said "No" he still couldn't read the chassis number. The problem this time was that I then had to take the vehicle to a police station, have a traffic officer get down and check the number against the V5, and fill in and stamp a form. Then I had to take this form back to the test station.

When I was with the traffic officer I pointed out the chassis number and he looked at it and asked how could the tester not read it as he could by just bending down by the front tyre. So at the test station I took the signed form in and gave it to the guy, who just said "OK, that's fine, car has passed".

I couldn't just accept that, and I asked for the tester to come out and explain how he could see the chassis number, and why he didn't come out the final time to check it even though I have a form signed by a traffic officer. I just argued until eventually one of the tester came out, and then I asked him to show me where the chassis number was. He went straight to the rear wheel arch and pointed under the vehicle, by the back tyre. So I asked him to crouch down with me and show me the number as I couldn't see it. He knelt down, got out his torch and started looking about while I stood up.

I pointed out that the traffic officer had said that he could see the number by just bending down. The tester guy eventually stood up and said that he couldn't see it, so I asked him if the vehicle was actually a failure then as he couldn't confirm the chassis number. He said it was confusing and he would need to check with his supervisor, who then appeared after about 10 minutes. The tester took him to the rear wheel arch and said that he couldn't confirm the chassis number as he couldn't see it. The supervisor had a look, and then went and looked under the front wheel arch, and said "Look, there it is, you can see it plainly". The other guy said "Oh, I didn't realise that it was there, the numbers are usually under the rear wheel arch".

So I had a strong discussion with the supervisor, and pointed out that it had cost me three trips to the test station, one trip down to my garage man, and one trip to a police station. He just said that he would bring the matter up at the next training meeting but he didn't offer to repay the money for the retest.

So this is what we have to put up with in Ireland with our NCT [National Car Test]. You can be failed for orange bulbs not being orange enough, slight misalignment of headlights, incorrect design of number plates, and pretty well anything else that is the issue of the day. The rules change as and when the testers decide.

Pierre3.

StrangeRover wrote:

I spied a 1990 Ford F250 in Texas that had such a rotten cab when you sat inside the seat would sink through the non existent floor, it was a deathtrap on wheels and he used it as a daily!!

I took a trip to Flinders Island many moons ago and as part of the accommodation you got given a car. This was in the mid 80s and the car I was given was a 1972 HQ Holden.

There was no floor, just the floor mat, so if you lifted it up, you could see the road. The bottom of the boot was in fact the top of the fuel tank, the boot having long since rotted out. The car wouldn't idle so I had a look under the bonnet and the air cleaner was a black mass. I took it off, pitched it down the bush and it ran fine after that.

I got pulled up by the police for no tail lights. When I told them where the car had come from, they said, don't worry about it, we have told him before to get them fixed, we will go chat to him tomorrow.

Pierre3 wrote:

IYou can be failed for orange bulbs not being orange enough, slight misalignment of headlights, incorrect design of number plates

All of those would be a fail here too. Indicators must be amber so when the orange paint starts to peel off and they show as white, that may be a fail or it may be an advisory depending on the mood of the tester and how white it is. Number plates too must be the correct font and spacing so ANPR cameras can read them (the argument they use is that if your car was stolen and had dodgy plates they wouldn't be able to track where it was if the ANPR systems couldn't read it, nothing to do with not being able to read it when you get flashed by a speed camera at all). They aren't too bothered about lights as long as there is no light showing above the horizontal line when on dip. The ones that fail regularly on lights are those where the plastic goes misty (some Renaults, Nissans, Hondas, Mercedes, Toyota, etc) so the light just gets scattered and there isn't really a beam there at all.

Here, they used to be really strict.

You'd have an exhaust emission test then the tester took a pencil rubbing of your engine number, signed a form and you were done.

It's easier now, they've dropped the pencil rubbing!

Pencil Rubbing - that's priceless! I mean, how could you possibly fake that? :)