A car with a slightly blowing exhaust can pass a MOT and I've passed plenty, I only tend to fail them on petrols if the leak is bad enough to affect the lamda reading. The bushes are adviseable if there is no excessive movement in them.

An MOT doesn't certify a car as roadworthy, it certifies that the testable items have met the minimum requirement at the time of test. The test for wheel bearings is to rotate the wheel and feel for any roughness in the bearing, you can't fail a car on a noisy wheel bearing.

I can't see why you put so much faith in the MOT and the standard of the MOT. The car could have its geometry a mile out and dodgy repairs hidden under layers of underseal. A MOT does not mean that a car is roadworthy or legal for the road. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being new and 1 being scrap, the MOT standard ranks around 2 or 3.

They quoted for the work at the time, which you must have accepted at the time, otherwise they wouldn't have fixed your car. So are we talking about the disparity between the final invoice and the quote which is £10, or the difference between your lowest quote and the invoice £80? Did this £180 include the MOT and presumably VAT?, did the £100 include VAT? You didn't have to get the car repaired with them, some people do drive dangerous cars away from test centres (not recommended), you could have had it transported away (at your cost) and then you'll have to get it back there for a retest - which may be chargeable depending on repair timescale. At the worst case the £100 quote could well end up costing more than £180 taking car recovery and retest costs into account. You may feel that you paid over the odds, what price do you place on the convenience of the repair and the retest? The spring unseated on test, it's a fault with your car, the tester does not have to reseat the spring, it's not his job as also it's not his job to speculate on the cause of any MOT failure.

Double post, sorry.

Some cars can take longer to test than other cars, hence the 30 minute delay in getting your car in for the test, it'll have a knock on effect throughout the day. The testing methods and regulation of the test are quite rigorous and the penalties for non compliance are quite real. You imply that they've ripped you off for the test fee and say that they've carried out a rubbish test, you do have an option of lodging an appeal with VOSA. If you really want to get back at them and are confident that your qualified opinion is that there is nothing wrong with your car an appeal is the way to go. VOSA take a very dim view of failure for profit. Can you post up the test result?

Speaking as a MOT tester, yes we can classify the defects as dangerous, not only defects on testable items but also defects noted on non testable items. We can only advise that a vehicle is not driven and of the risks/consequences involved in driving the vehicle, we cannot stop anyone driving a dangerous vehicle away, the worst that we could do is inform the police and they could take action if they stop the vehicle. If you look at the wording on the MOT paperwork, there is no mention of a test failure, what is mentioned is 'Refusal of an MOT Test Certificate'. An MOT test certificate is valid until it expires, having refusals issued before certificate expiry does not invalidate the MOT certificate.

I think that only the Police or VOSA can prohibit a vehicle from going on the road, a MOT testing station certainly can't. We had a car fail the other day and the customer drove it away against our recommendation. That had split a metal brake pipe on the test and lost alot of fluid.

I changed a rear bulb in a Mark 1 Fiat Punto recently and used the supplied wheelbrace to undo the nuts holding the rear light cluster in.

It sounds as though the brake stuck on. There are numerous reasons why this could happen and they are not all caused by the caliper, a faulty flexible hose, master cylinder, ABS unit, servo, incorrect fitting. Unipart are a well respected parts supplier to the motor trade and don't do business by habitually ripping people off, if the caliper is at fault you'll get your money back. You have a choice of buying a replacement and hoping that the other one is faulty and running the risk of owning two of them, or waiting until it is inspected and getting a warranty replacement. Unfortunately with cars, often what appears to be the problem is the symptom, which if fixed without the cause of the problem being rectified will reoccur.

It's the price that you pay for the packaging of the car, low bonnet lines, more interior space and crowded engine bays. There should be legislation that states that consumables such as bulbs should be made replaceable in 30 minutes using only the standard tools supplied with the car.

So you've not had cause to use your lights in the 10 days between the service and your post?

The clutch isn't a service item, except that if it is adjustable on the cable. Virtually all clutches these days are self adjusting via a mechanism on the cable or they are hydraulically operated. If the car drove into the workshop and didn't exhibit any abnormalities on the post service road test then the technician wouldn't any reason to suspect that it may fail in the near future. On the MOT the clutch isn't testable, even if the tester did notice something wrong with it he is under no obligation to advise it. You may be under the impression that the MOT is some sort of vehicle health check, it's not. A mot is conducted without removing parts from the car, what maybe noticed when access is good may not be necessarily seen on a MOT. What are these items that were noted?

If you had specifically asked whether it had been a driving school car and was lied to then you would have some recourse. Companies often have names on V5s which don't relate to what the car was used for. Provincial Securities used to be a name that Swan National hire cars were registered under. We once sold a lovely white Mondeo ST, name on the V5 was Ford Motor Company, actual use was for a demonstration car for the Police, it even had the calibrated speedometer fitted. There are plenty of cars out there registered to VW Financial Services which could be used by anyone for any purpose.

Over two weeks since this started, it would be interesting to know the cause of the engine light. The OP believes it to be caused by Kwik Fit, though as the OP didn't realise that his tyres needed replacing, leaves me skeptical.

Why do you always place so much importance on a MOT being an indication of the cars condition? If you want a condition report get it professionally inspected. A MOT may throw up the brake faults - if the tester can see the brakes and if the roller brake test shows some problems. To illustrate what VOSA consider to be the minimum standard, have some brake disc pictures: They look horrible, from a MOT point of view they are fine and it would be perfectly acceptable for the MOT to fit a new set of pads to those.

I beleive that when paintwork repairs are carried out to sections of bodywork that to acheive an acceptable colour match or transition of the new paint into the old paint that a technique known as paint blending is used. To be able to blend the the paint, the surface must be free of obstructions such as stick on badges. Badges are usually held on by double sided tape which is destroyed or loses its effectiveness when they are removed. To remove the old tape and apply new tape, cutting it to the badge shape is quite time consuming, without a guaranteed acceptable result, so it is usually more cost effective simplly to renew the badges.

The AA may be household name with a good reputation, but in my experience they aren't always right. They sometimes do a good job in pointing the customer in the wrong direction. We had a case of a 3 day old car where the customer was told by the breakdown company that its back axle was about to fall off, understandably the customer appeared in quite a heated mood. The actual fault was that a long rod had gone through one of the rear tyres and was hitting the inside of the wheel every time it went round. The garage seems genuinely concerned, nobody was hurt and their intention to do a good service on the vehicle has gone awry. They have sorted the problem and they will not make a similar mistake again. We book MOTs in hourly slots throughout the day, a booking for say 10 will not give enough time beforehand for a service. You can notice MOT items on a service, but you may not have time to fix them, you may not be able to contact the customer in time to fix them or the parts may not be available in time. I think that VOSA actually prefer the MOT to be done first as it gives them a truer picture of what defects vehicles are been driven with.

The OP describes seeing evidence of the dash panel insert removal, but does not mention him removing and disassembling the dash panel to verify the removal of the bulbs. The Golf mark 5, uses a dash panel, of which the front face of the circuit board looks like this: Photo used from http://volkswagenownersclub.com/vw/showthread.php/19652-Cluster-LED-change/page2) On the photo I have circled a warning light LED in red. Looking at the above link, you'll see what an undertaking it is, not to mention that on some VW models the dash panel also incorporates the immobiliser and acts as an interface so that vehicle systems can communicate. One slip with the soldering iron can cause £100s of damage and render the vehicle immobile.

To remove the warning lights from the dash involves some serious work. They are not bulbs but LEDs soldered onto a printed circuit board, not too dissimilar to a computer motherboard. Apparently it is a lot easier to disassemble the dash panel, remover the layer containing the graphic and put a bit of tape or paint over the reverse side of the graphic to prevent the light from shining through. If it has been done this way, then hopefully no damage has been done. The MOT test is also suspect in that just the absence of any ABS warning lights is not good enough for a pass, the warning light has to follow a set sequence for which the tester will be notified when the test is started. You could get VOSA involved in an appeal, which would certainly create a bit of friction between your mechanic and the testing station. I can't really see the point of why the mechanic has done this, with a lap top and a £250 cable, anyone can get access to a full range of nearly dealer level VW diagnostics with free updates and technical support. He would have been able to diagnose the problem and earn some money in fixing it. The Teves system of a specific model number as fitted to a range of VW vehicles is known to give problems on an internal pressure sensor, to an extent that VW have a goodwill system in place for out of warranty vehicles and have made available a repair kit at a substantial cost saving over a complete replacement unit.

Doesn't look like too much of a problem to me. In days gone by alot of BL cars had a left hand drive wiper pattern for the UK market, with a larger arc of the windscreen left unswept on the drivers side. It seems to me as though the Smart wipers have at least been designed with a regard to the UK market and obviously they must comply with UK regulations.

It's a hire car, while it's getting repaired it isn't earning any money, it may be earmarked for a booking on its return, so if it can't go out a replacement will have to be sourced. These things take time and labour, also the repair will need to be done properly. I've seen a hire car returned with a crude filler and aerosol job to cover up a panel scrape. It was on the customers qown insurance, so his insurance company got the bill, no ifs or buts, he was being dishonest and it didn't work. Providing the repair is of similar quality to the original, I can't see it being a problem.

The MOT testers manual says this about checking suspension arms: Method of Inspection Check the security and the amount of play at pins/bushes/mountings and ball joints locating a. upper and lower suspension arms/wishbones b. trailing arms c. radius arms d. tie-bars/rods e. panhard rods f. torque/reaction arms g. anti-roll bars and linkages h. sub-frames. Reason for Rejection 3 Excessive play in a pin/bush or pin/bearing, for example more than – 2mm for a 12mm diameter pin – 3mm for a 25mm diameter pin – 10% of the diameter for pins over 25mm diameter · excessive play in ball joint · deterioration of a rubber, synthetic bush or mounting resulting in excessive movement · deterioration of the bonding of a rubber bush/mounting resulting in excessive movement. Note: Some rubber/synthetic bushes are designed to provide a comparatively high degree of compliance. They are therefore likely to show some movement. Such components should normally only be rejected when serious deterioration of the bonding or flexible material is evident. What was the actual problem with the suspension arms and which arms were they? As you can see from the figures given the suspension can be a long way from perfect before it becomes a fail. The MOT test is not a definitive safety inspection, it looks at certain testable items which are assessed on their condition and to the standards set out in the testers manual at the time of test, it should not be used as a guide as to what work may be required in the future. The tester is not obligated to issue advisories on what (in his opinion) may require attention in the future, only to asess the testable items at the time of test to see whether they meet the minimum requirement. Invariably the tester will issue advisories out of courtesy or just to cover himself, but it is difficult as to where to draw the line with them on a 9 year old car. You could end up with a couple of pages stating very obvious items that you would expect to see on an old car. With the repairing garage saying 'this should at least have been pointed out to her on the advisory sheet but it wasn't.', shows that there is some doubt with them as to whether it should have been a pass or a fail. I think that at the end of the day it comes down to opinion, a servicing and repair garage is always going to have a higher standard of what's right or not, for example they'll want to replace brake pads if the they see them at 3mm thick, a MOT tester working to the standards he has to could think, 3mm that's double the test limit, no need to even advise that. It's not that the tester is negligent, it's that you think the MOT test is more than it really is, you only have to look in the testers manual at brake discs to see how low some of the testing standards are. http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/m4s03000501.htm Note that wear and corrosion on them is not even mentioned.

It seems from your description to be a pre existing fault. A small bump in the rear shouldn't have any affect on the airbag system, if it did you would probably be looking at deployed airbags and seatbelt pretensioners, with the associated crash data stored in the ECU. Insurance is there to put you back into the position you were in before the accident, it is not there to pay for the repair of pre existing faults. You've had the light switched off, so presumably you have to read the codes before erasing them. What were the codes?, do they relate to the seat occupancy sensor?

Brake discs have to be seriously bad to fail the MOT, reasons for failure for brake discs and pads are: f. a brake lining or pad insecure or less than 1.5 mm thick at any point g. a brake disc or drum contaminated by brake fluid, oil or grease h. a brake disc or drum in such a condition that it is seriously weakened or insecure On some cars it is near on impossible to assess the brake pad thickness with the wheel and wheel trim on. For discs, they can be as corroded, scored or worn as you like, provided that they aren't thin enough to the point of being considered seriously weakened, have chunks missing out of them or are falling apart, they're a pass. There is a test for the operation of the brakes and they have to meet a minimum efficiency requirement. If as far as he could see, the tester could not find a reason to fail the brakes then all he can do is issue an advisory if he thinks that they may need some attention in the near future, which he did and it seems that he was correct. Testers have to test to VOSA standards, not their own, Kwik Fits or yours, which for brake disc/pad condition is shockingly low.