MOT's and Main Dealers

Old Tup

Member
Just do what should be the basic weekly checks B4 taking your vehicle to a main dealer service and mot - You will save a small fortune, change wipers for new, fill the screenwash bottle, check ALL the bulbs, rub your fingertips over the full width of each tyre and check the tyre pressures. Alloy wheels give you the chance to do a cursory brake pad/disc check without jacking up the vehicle and keep a record of the results of those checks.
Cultivate a good relationship with your local motor engineer ( ours prepares amateur rally cars and use them whenever your vehicle has run out of warranty


Changing gearbox oil at recommended intervals could be one of the most cost effective servicing procedures "on the planet".

We have a Toyota Corrola runabout which suggests that the auto gearbox NEVER needs its oil changing, that is probably 'cos the lifetime expectancy is no more than 150,00 miles, whereas a change of ATF every 75k miles or so will make sure that the reason for scrapping the car will not be the transmission.
Hmmmm
Tired of the annual charge at my local man for topping up the screen wash…..
So filled it full morning of service / MOT….
Bill arrived….as I remember it 53p for screen wash to fill up to full!
You can’t win!
A bit like consumables……????
 
I dont know who makes the Ford type (and Evoke interestingly according to parts compatibility) but it only takes a button pressing sequence wind them back, which is good for the owner as anyone can do it at no cost, being committed to a dealer with a laptop is not ideal, but gives the dealer an income stream.

If i can find it again I will link it as it might work on a volvo anyway.

As I mentioned, our cars are looked after by a Volvo specialist and they are first rate, as they have the training and equipment to look after even the very latest hybrid Volvos. I don't have the skills to work on my own (or probably any modern type) car so I leave it to people who are competent to do it. They service and MOT the car on the same visit each year. They really are great vehicles.
 
Despite the probably hundreds of pages of test procedures, the standards of MOT's seem to vary widely across the country from the hour on the ramp job (including tea breaks) to the quick walk round, kick the tyres, flash the lights job. My old Disco soldiered on for years with holes in the floor, wheel arches, inner wings etc (not structural, guv), only to fail after another 4K miles with 3 pages in red, when another tester did the job. On the other hand having a Rangie completely fail its braking system with two pipes rusted through at 70mph one morning,:oops: with nine months remaining on its MOT, persuaded me to change to another MOT test station.

This is a known problem in the motoring trade and the DVSA are well aware of it. Advice on an MOT form is advice only. My relative runs a garage and I've seen him do many MOTs before. Lots of advisories on an MOT form are to only demonstrate that the tester is showing his work is diligent and doing a thorough job, not just trying to make money out of you.

DVSA are known to put vehicles through testing stations which they have carefully examined beforehand as a way of checking up on dodgy MOT testing stations and they will stop a garage doing MOTs if they think they aren't doing a proper job or they are crooked. Trading standards also do similar things I'm told?
 

le bon paysan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin, France
They do take a bit of getting used to, my wife hated it until her hip gave her issues with a clutch, having learnt to drive it properly she would never go back, even with a new hip.
Kick down coming in to the corner to change the gear down as you approach the bend.
The only issue I have is reversing out of the garage, why did they make it so you push the stick forward to go back? Makes it worse being used to driving tractors where it is the sensible way!
Love our C5 auto. Never go back to a manual for our car. Van still manual.
 

s line

Member
Some years ago,i brought a cheap voucher on Groupon for a Mot.

It was with a well known group of garages and i wanted my car Mot,d on a sunday as this was my only day off.I could drop off my car and do some other things in town.

I dropped the car off and half an hour later ,the manager phoned me up asking if the Cam belt had been changed recently?I said that the car is only there for a mot only and nothing else.

His reason was when they rev the engine for the emissions testing he did,nt want to snap the cam belt.!!!

Well after a hour i went back and my car had failed the mot......on emissions.I said how come? They i advised that i serviced the car with them and they will retest the mot and they will sort it.

I said i will let them know.Come monday phoned my local garage in the village and booked time off work as they don,t open on weekends and got my car booked in for a mot for days later.

It went straight through.

I learn,t my lesson never buy groupon vochers and stay local.
 

Paddington

Member
Location
Soggy Shropshire
To be fair our local garage will sort out minor issues for the MOT at the time and just charge for the parts and labour. I had a fog lamp bulb fail at another garage (though it was working the day before). I asked if I could come and replace it, I had a spare in the car ? No, they did not allow customers to work on their own cars, H&S don't you know. Could they replace it ? No, they would have to book it in as a job, could be a week. I collected the car, replaced the bulb and it passed the retest, which I of course paid for.
Sometime after this I ordered a few car parts from Paddocks and arriving home at night found two boxes on the doorstep. One was the parts, the other was a stack of blank MOT forms ! We were nowhere near the garage, but the delivery driver must have associated car parts and MOTs. I was tempted to er process the forms amongst the poor and needy, but took them to the garage next day. Think we moved after that, so never got a free MOT next year.
 

Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Some years ago,i brought a cheap voucher on Groupon for a Mot.

It was with a well known group of garages and i wanted my car Mot,d on a sunday as this was my only day off.I could drop off my car and do some other things in town.

I dropped the car off and half an hour later ,the manager phoned me up asking if the Cam belt had been changed recently?I said that the car is only there for a mot only and nothing else.

His reason was when they rev the engine for the emissions testing he did,nt want to snap the cam belt.!!!

Well after a hour i went back and my car had failed the mot......on emissions.I said how come? They i advised that i serviced the car with them and they will retest the mot and they will sort it.

I said i will let them know.Come monday phoned my local garage in the village and booked time off work as they don,t open on weekends and got my car booked in for a mot for days later.

It went straight through.

I learn,t my lesson never buy groupon vochers and stay local.
Cam Belt breakage used to be an issue, at least 3 hard revs to get a reading, after a few broke the rule was ask the customer when it was changed to put the problem back to the customer. Did they give you the print out of the failed emissions?
 

TheTallGuy

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
No they did,nt give a print out.Just a notice to say it had failed.
Probably didn't do the emissions test then as they didn't want to risk the cam belt failing. Inability to perform the required tests is an automatic failure.

Probably 10 years ago I was at a test centre waiting for my car to be MOT'd, the tester popped his head around the door to ask the owner of the vehicle currently being tested if it was okay to do the rev tests to which the owner agreed. About a minute later there was a screeching followed by a series of pops, crunches and bangs as the car shat itself all over the workshop, "Oh well, I guess that's a failure then!" said the car owner. Chatting to the tester afterwards he said that they'd had a couple fail previously, but that was the most spectacular.
 
Cam Belt breakage used to be an issue, at least 3 hard revs to get a reading, after a few broke the rule was ask the customer when it was changed to put the problem back to the customer. Did they give you the print out of the failed emissions?
We have had 3 cam belt breakages recently.
Two were on long term hire Northgate Peugeot partners with refrigeration conversions where Northgate service dept had failed to register that the standard change interval of 120,000 miles was superseded with a change at 60,000 miles because of the engine driven refrigeration compressor. They snapped at 78,000 and 83,000 miles respectively. Neither of the vans were back in service with us for over 4 weeks so we had to hire in and insure at an extra cost of over £700 per week.
One of the vans was repaired and the other got a complete new engine (they were both under manufactures warranty.)
The hire contract period is now completed and we have bought the van which had the new engine at 78,000 and then at 3 years old and at 136,000 had a new cam belt fitted by Northgate.
However within 30 days of buying this van it once again experienced a cam belt failure so our immediate thought was that maybe the cam belt hadn’t actually been changed.
Technically this new engine should be under warranty but Peugeot Assist first decided that it should be recovered to a Peugeot main dealer, then said no, recover it to a garage of your choice so we had it recovered to our trusted local “back street motor engineer”.
From breakdown to garage was under 10 miles but took over 7 hours due to buck passing within the recovery system (NFU - RAC - Peugeot).
Yes the cam belt had failed, but it appeared new so let’s get it pulled apart, see photographs - there can be no denying the chain of events which has led to this - firstly the stud holding the plastic idler had snapped and the idler was friction welded to the timing cover, this caused the new belt to snap.
The bigger bolt is the crankshaft bolt which has to be removed to replace the cambelt and this can clearly be seen to have been over tightened to the point of stretching the bolt and damaging the thread.
Conclusion: Over zealous tightening of both the idler stud and crankshaft bolt without observing correct torque settings by an incompetent “Northgate Mechanic “
The van was out of service for just 7 days, and we have paid our guys for the repair ( camshaft, followers, new studs and bolts etc).
Northgate have yet to comment but I will have no doubts about using the small claims court to recover the £1200 for this repair.
 

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Least you lot on the Main land can get a MOT over hear in Northern Ireland its become very dificult sence January 2020
a MOTs is done in government run test centers there's only 15 in the hole country first in January they found cracks in 48 out 55 lifts in all the test centers all mot canceled the covid hit and they closed all test centers there a massive back log its over two year since my car has had an MOT
 

Michael S

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Matching Green
Our local main dealers don't have MOT facilities. Both my Hilux and our Volvo are tested at local independents even when done concurrent with a service at the main dealer.

I think that main dealer servicing is getting worse. Recently our Volvo returned without the locking wheel nuts tightened so that they were lost. There were a lot of red faces when I returned to complain and we have been given a free service next year as well as replacement locking wheel nuts. The AdBlue light came on in my Hilux less than a 1000 miles after it had been in the Toyota garage with the charge for the AdBlue on the bill. I filled it with 11 litres from our IBC and phoned to complain. Their logic was that if it's on the bill they must have done it. Given the inconvenience of going back I said it must have a fault if they filled it and would monitor it and let them know, done 2000 miles since I filled it and no light yet.
 
Our local main dealers don't have MOT facilities. Both my Hilux and our Volvo are tested at local independents even when done concurrent with a service at the main dealer.

I think that main dealer servicing is getting worse. Recently our Volvo returned without the locking wheel nuts tightened so that they were lost. There were a lot of red faces when I returned to complain and we have been given a free service next year as well as replacement locking wheel nuts. The AdBlue light came on in my Hilux less than a 1000 miles after it had been in the Toyota garage with the charge for the AdBlue on the bill. I filled it with 11 litres from our IBC and phoned to complain. Their logic was that if it's on the bill they must have done it. Given the inconvenience of going back I said it must have a fault if they filled it and would monitor it and let them know, done 2000 miles since I filled it and no light yet.

My wife used to have her Toyota looked after by a main dealer and they were pretty good.

The independent garages that specialise in particular brands are normally the ones to go for. Ask on a dedicated owners forum.
 

MF-ANDY

Member
Location
s.e cambs
Did I hear correctly on a radio advert the other day? Have your car serviced at a Toyota garage and they will extend your warranty for 12 months from that date. I know most makes extend roadside assistance for 12 months after a service but warranty??
 
Did I hear correctly on a radio advert the other day? Have your car serviced at a Toyota garage and they will extend your warranty for 12 months from that date. I know most makes extend roadside assistance for 12 months after a service but warranty??

I believe the same is true of Lexus?

With Lexus you can keep the manufacturers warranty if you keep using the dealers up until 10 years or 100,000 miles from memory. Of course this will not cover wearing parts but for drivetrain and body it's a no brainer if you own one?

I know Toyota/Lexus are very particular about the quality of the parts they use and even things like the quality of the steel and paint they buy.
 
I believe the same is true of Lexus?

With Lexus you can keep the manufacturers warranty if you keep using the dealers up until 10 years or 100,000 miles from memory. Of course this will not cover wearing parts but for drivetrain and body it's a no brainer if you own one?

I know Toyota/Lexus are very particular about the quality of the parts they use and even things like the quality of the steel and paint they buy.
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They biggest wearing parts on
I believe the same is true of Lexus?

With Lexus you can keep the manufacturers warranty if you keep using the dealers up until 10 years or 100,000 miles from memory. Of course this will not cover wearing parts but for drivetrain and body it's a no brainer if you own one?

I know Toyota/Lexus are very particular about the quality of the parts they use and even things like the quality of the steel and paint they buy.

Now if that mileage limitation was 300,000 miles it could just about be worth it !
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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