[Closed] Dodgy MOT

Dob them in. How many other dubious cars are they allowing to go out on the road?

Shop ‘em to DVSA

How many other death traps are there trolling around your local area?

Can I have the name of the testing station please?😉

Name and shame!

Asking for a friend.......

Poopscoop beat me to it LOL

So what vehicle did they do the MOT on then ? Its all computer linked these days and and the brake tests etc so something has to be going on

I really don’t know what they did. There’s video of them ragging it up & down the street. They drive over the brake rollers, to get to the ramp, it sits on the ramp for a while and then they reverse it out and park it up.

Dvsa mot reporting

Maybe mot tester disconnected the camera as you don't have permission to film him at work or permission to film in the building. Then reconnected it when he put it back outside.
I work in a garage and disconnect dashcams or cover them up as you don't have any permission to film in the building and my work deems it as a security risk too

My old Saab used to get through MOTs in Edinburgh. Even when we moved north, I'd take the car to get annual service (indy garage) and MOT. Used to pass with various remarks.

Eventually I took car to local garage - the list of fails was only exceeded by the list of advisories.

e.g. - Garage: "loose steering column"
-- Me: "it's always done that..
plenty of linkages were pretty shot too.

Not sure what was going on. Old garage maybe didn't want to lose custom.
New garage had nothing to gain. They refused to fix it "just enough"...

The time stamps on the recordings are continuous - it’s a Kenwood integrated dash cam anyway & takes some pretty involved fettling to disconnect from the head unit. Nothing like that was recorded.

Maybe mot tester disconnected the camera as you don’t have permission to film him at work or permission to film in the building. Then reconnected it when he put it back outside.
I work in a garage and disconnect dashcams or cover them up as you don’t have any permission to film in the building and my work deems it as a security risk too

Given MoT testers don't have permission to move anything in the boot to check the spare wheel, I doubt they are supposed to disconnect any camera. I'm not sure what security risk there would be from a camera, nor whether there is any explicit requirement to have permission to film - I'd be rather suspicious of a garage that turned off a dashcam.

However, how do dashcams work? Are they always recording or only when it senses motion? If its on rollers it would appear to be stationary?

Report it. Someone might take a knacker in, they pass it, it suffers a catastrophic failure at 70 with the wife and kids in it. Not all hero's wear capes. 😁

Bought a car with a full new full MOTa few years back
After a week noticed a few things not quite right
Checked MOT history and car had failed on these things, but then had been retested next day and passed (same garage)
When I contacted garage they admitted they didn’t actually retest the car, took the owners word he’d fixed the problems
I was compensated financially for getting problems fixed, but it never did sit right with me so reported the garage

you don’t have any permission to film in the building

... or require any.

You can take photos / videos wherever and of whomever you like, except in places where such things are specifically restricted. An MOT centre is not such a place. You're on shaky ground here.

Imagine reading about a fatal accident involving a car with a dodgy MOT from said dodgy MOT station. What if you were involved in an accident because your car was unsafe after its dodgy MOT? Report it.

I’m not sure what security risk there would be from a camera

Mate of mine had his disconnected by a Merc main dealer. When he asked why, they told him the workshop had been robbed of loads of tools, and they were pretty sure dashcam footage was used to see where they hid all the keys for the tool chests and such.

It’s a bloody strange one for sure.
My friend has a MOT garage, and I’m sure he has said to me that the MOT should take between 45 minutes and an hour. You have to log on, do the tests (as I said above the brake test etc are linked in on the computer , as is the emissions test ), then print off certificate or advise a fail etc ,then log off. So the system should pick up that the test only took 30 mins and flag that up.
When mine failed on brakes , I jokingly said stick another car on and pretend it’s mine, to which he said the weight of the vehicle would flag up it’s not the right one.

I don’t know if all that above is true, but I’ll take his word for it as he is an MOT tester and I’m not.

So devils advocate here. You drive your car round knowing that it's got all these faults and now it's someone else's fault?
Place doesn't sound great but are they any better than the person driving a car round that they admit has questionable workmanship and iffy part on it?

The idea was that it would fail, the garage would rectify the faults and any others they identified, I'd get an evening doing other things, like I dunno, playing with my bike. Instead I've spent it annoying the neighbours with the shrill call of my impact wrench as I change the front discs and pads. Sunday now seems to be scheduled as a "day to change the topmounts" - a miserable task as VW have for some reason decided the best way to secure the uprights to the shocks is with some god-awful split-the-upright-with-a-nasty-tool arrangement.

As for the lights, well, they are aligned using the 5cm dip @ 5m method, but really I'd have liked an MOT tester to check the cutoff's properly align & perhaps justify the massive time and expense I went to to build decent lights without wanting to blind everyone else (I could have easily just fitted some HID lamps, but didn't).

So they took one look at it, and said "that's a ****ing nightmare of jobs, **** it, pass it and it'll be the owners problem in a day or two" 😉

You can take photos / videos wherever and of whomever you like, except in places where such things are specifically restricted. An MOT centre is not such a place. You’re on shaky ground here.

Not sure that's true. From memory for photos you can pretty much take pictures of anyone or anything from public property. If you want to take photos on private property you need permission of the land owner. I assume film is the same as long as it's for personal use, i.e you're not making a feature film.

This is why I hate MOT time, I’ve had the slight difference in shades of amber for the indicators noted whilst not noticing a fairly critical loose suspension part, pointed out to me by the laser alignment guy (no cost fix). He was amazed to see the fresh mot on the passenger seat.

Not sure that’s true. From memory for photos you can pretty much take pictures of anyone or anything from public property. If you want to take photos on private property you need permission of the land owner.

Ack, I think you're right. Rather, you don't need to seek permission, but the land owner can tell you not to. My bad.

I think public place is okay to film or take pics. Private areas are a no no or public places where someone could expect privacy such as a toilet.

Our work is fully fenced with security entrance etc so are pretty hot on privacy and security. We can't take photos in the building or of things we work on.

VW have for some reason decided the best way to secure the uprights to the shocks is with some god-awful split-the-upright-with-a-nasty-tool arrangement.

While i would have agreed with you when i was trying to bodge it

We bought the tool for the last time i did strutts on a dub - it was AWESSSSSOME so quick compared to bashing the one off on the peugeot. bolt it into the clamp bolt hole - tighten the wedge and slide the knuckle off with ease.

it wasnt astronomically priced either.

turned a **** me this is impossible takes for ever job to a couple of hours.

With regards filming, some people are getting confused between the difference between taking pictures and publishing them or making money from them. And also there's a public interest argument so even when recording isn't allowed, it might be if you were whistleblowing or recording a crime being committed for example.

e.g. if you believed an MOT tester was dodgy then leaving the dashcam running would be legal so you could report that and use it as evidence, same as putting a nanny cam in your parents care home if you believed the staff were abusing them. You couldn't however then put that footage on youtube if it identified the individuals. If you watch this sort of stuff on the news you'll notice they usually pick a clip that only shows people's legs/feet.

@trail_rat do you have link as most of the ones I've seen online look like a hex key socket that someone's thrown at a bench grinder in rage?

Sounds like a normal MOT to me. If the vehicle won't fit on the brake tester they have to perform a road test of the brakes instead. Then most of the time it sits up on the ramps being prodded from below. The tester cannot possibly test every single item in the time allotted, so they mostly follow their nose for the things most likely to fail based on the overall vehicle condition. For example, if they notice a lot of corrosion on the underside they could easily spend half the time prodding the chassis and suspension parts looking for damage and not bother looking at the wipers.

Was the car just in for MOT? Did you take it to the MOT place due to it's reputation? Just interested really.
I sort of get the impression you would have been happy if the MOT station had gone through the steps visually you would have been happy you got Passed and advised,
If you knew there were issues why did you not get someone to look at them first? before the MOT it would have sailed through then.
I get the time thing but you knew the issues and after all the vehicle is your responsibility. You drive it around and even if you have an MOT that is a decent one it is only tested as presented even if it lasts a year.
I just don't understand why you didn't get them to do this prior to the mot. Did you want a freebe?

I bought a used van recently and the mot was nearly out. Asked them to mot it as a condition of sale, which they did.

I've since found both numberplate lights didn't work and the wipers were weathered and useless.

I know both of these are fails so it doesn't fill me with confidence for the rest of the checks.

Still, van seems pretty good so far fingers crossed.

Which garage in Edinburgh was passing old SAABs?
Asking for a friend from Edinburgh who just bought an old SAAB*

* Please don't check my 'threads started'.

I bought a used van recently and the mot was nearly out. Asked them to mot it as a condition of sale, which they did

Have you looked at its MOT history (link) for advisories? Maybe consider an early service if they were flagged last year 🙁

Out in Spain you can buy mot's for UK registered vehicles to save driving them back.The guy selling them blatantly advertises the service in an ex pat newspaper.They are on the DVLA website.
I know people who have been buying them for years,including for a mini bus to do airport runs.A friend even bought one for a goods vehicle for 400 euros.

Yourguitar hero.
Me and my motorcyclist friends allways used Scotts between Portobello and Musselburgh. Not dodgy at all - they do a proper check - but they do understand and are sympathetic to old vehicles so don't fail on trivialities.

personally I would want a thorough check.

L

personally I would want a thorough check

^^this^^
Didn’t want a dodgy test, it’s meant to be a government mandated, reasonably comprehensive vehicle inspection to assess road worthiness, give me some pointers of things to look out for in the near future. At the very least I’d have liked someone to go around with a pry bar and check the suspension bushes, perhaps assess the brakes for effectiveness, shove a probe up its arse and give it an emissions test. The excuse that it was “on the ramps” doesn’t hold up as the entire underside is covered with trays. The only thing you can see being the prop shaft, exhaust, haldex and rear suspension. All its previous tests have come with an advisory pointing out that the underside is obscured. They didn’t even detect the slight weep of oil from the engine tray tell-tale that I picked up and rectified when I finished the brakes yesterday.

Have never used that garage before, knew nothing of their reputation. I’ll be shopping them.

I go to Scott's too.
But always handy to have an ace in the hole