NO MORE MOT's?

[george garside]

in the days before the advent of the 'ten year test' as the MOt was originally known some inssurers required an 'engineers report' stating simply that the vehicle was considered to be in a roadworthy condition. These were supplied on letter heading by local garages who aften styled themselves, quite rightly, as motor or automobile engineers and who Like Roy Bradock had a comprehensive machine shop and the skills to use it!

Tony's posting makes it quite clear that an MOT is not required by his insurer if it is not a legal requirement. The modern MOT test is not geared for pre 60's cars relying to a great extent on testing things that didn't exist in the thirties or forties. Many modern testers haave no idea how to pass or fail mechanical brakes and could well decide to fail them because they are designed to have greater pedal trvel tha modern hydraulics etc etc. Indeed i remember taking a CB Bradford for a test in the sixties when the brake test was done on the road using a tapley meter.- the young (qualified) MOT tester had absolutely no idea of how to double declutch so I gave him a stern warning that he would be liable for considerable expense if he buggered up my irreplaceable gearbox! He proceded to carry out the whole road test at around 10mph whilst I sat next to him trying hard to keep a straight face!

For those who feel that their vehicle may fall apart and who do not trust their own mechanical judgement the solution is simple. Ask a knowledgeable local garage, fellow club member or other person familier with the anatomy of cars of the period to carry out a thorough examination of the 'safety bits & pieces' and report on any bits that need fettling. In my opinion this would be rafe more useful than a modern MOT on a pre war or early post war vehicle. Any such examination would of course ,like the MOT, only state that the vehicle was roadworthy at the time of examination and would exressly exclude the 'helper or examiner' from liability for any failures that take place thereafter.

george.

[robert lintott]

Just to answer a few points here. I just obtained nil paid tax discs for my 1930 Austin 16 and the 1952 Javelin without difficulty. The renewal notice from Swansea says "no MOT required " and the Post Office seemed to know the system .

On the Insurance issue I doubt if an Insurer would place any reliance on an MOT ( in the past) or some similar document in future . Insurers are interested in the condition of the car at the time of the accident and inspect accordingly . An Mot up to a year old is no guide to condition of say tyres , which as has been said, are a cause of a significant proportion of accidents ---aside from the "nut " behind the wheel!

Any owner could ask his garage to perform a check on what he thinks are critical items and it might be wise to do so. However I think it will not be possible to get an actual MOT certificate on a pre 1960 car now. So if an Insurer requires some kind of condition certificate he will have to design the "test" and the certificate both of which could be out of date next week.The owner and driver is responsible not Swansea.

Happy motoring Bob PS no collusion with the above!

[Jack]

I think we would face some difficulty if trying to get a garage to conduct a test without any liability for their work.

Unfortunately in the UK it isn't possible to sign away liability quite as easily as that - negligence is still negligence, and a garage with a signed piece of paper declaring that they are not responsible even if they miss something critical simply won't cut it in court.

Not sure how this works with an MOT, but suspect that VOSA have some backup for garages, who should have liability insurance themselves - but if they start designing their own "MOT" and that proves not to check a critical safety feature, we might find our local friendly garage doesn't have the cover they think they do.

This is a potential minefield for a garage. Testing a vehicle and providing a certificate of roadworthiness that isn't endorsed by VOSA could put them at risk, without an organisation to back them in the event of a legal dispute, and as a result I get the feeling many garages will quite happily inspect your vehicle, will tell you that it is safe or what work is required to make it so, but I doubt very much that many would put that into writing.

What we need is some guidance on what is going on, and what we as owners should be doing. Right now there seems to be a complete lack of clarity from anyone in the industry on what happens now.

Jack.

[Keith Clements]

Does this then come down to the driver of the vehicle ensuring that the car is 'Roadworthy'? In which case we need a definition of what is considered 'roadworthy' as this must be a matter of opinion. Some people might say that ALL pre-war cars are not roadworthy on a modern road with modern 'drivers' driving modern cars!

We then need some case law surrounding this as it is probably unreasonable to expect a driver to know about some defects until they actually are contributory to an accident. I brought up the defect of a cracked track rod deliberately; but even brakes pulling to one side might not be detected by some drivers.

As an example. at the Welsh rally doing concours judging I saw a broken rear suspension arm. Now the driver had not detected this, the car had an MOT, but it was certainly not roadworthy. I would hope that the insurance company has to prove the defect was likely to have been contributory to the accident, had not been there prior to the accident and hopefully would have to prove the driver should have known about the defect. They cannot simply say that any defect found after the accident makes the car not roadworthy and thus decline a pay out.

Before using silicone fluid or non-melting bearing grease I would frequently find either fluid or grease on a shoe when checking them every year. Thus the braking efficiency of the car was not up to its maximum ; but it was still 'roadworthy' . Sure if I did an emergency braking stop every time I took the car out I might have noticed a difference, but if it was the first time out after a winter lay up it might have been difficult to remember how it was. This is why a quantative brake test as done at the MOT is useful, if you keep the results every year. It is thus good to do this test after any long lay up.

The arguments get even more difficult when considering the body strength of a car that is weakened by rust and stress fractures. A hole in the sill of a car with a strong chassis is irrelevant to roadworthiness, but quite important in a Mini as it holds the two subframes together. Javelins in particular suffer from rust around the rear suspension points. At what point does the car become un-roadworthy?

After the celebration of my Award and NEC on Saturday, on Sunday we put Peter's car on the Rotisserie. We discovered cracks around the cross tube on the bulkhead close to the front suspension and cracks at the top of a rear shock absorber mounting. Both could be considered serious. We inspected the car on a ramp before driving from Switzerland; but could not have expected to detect these, although there were some ominous bangings on the rough roads.

All I can say is keep your feel, ears, eyes and noses alert when driving so as to detect any change

[Chris Spencer]

A couple of facts

1 / MOT cert is not proof that a vehicle is roadworthy

2/ You can still take your pre 1960 vehicle to a testing station for a MOT test every year (and it is excatly what I shall be doing)

Maybe what we should be doing as the majority of us have modern cars that require MOT's and some of us have none Jowett - hence post 1960 vehicles that are subject to MOT's - is building a contry wide listing of Classic / Vintage / impartial - vehicle friendly MOT testing stations

[p.p.]

maybe a ideea,

invite in every club section in the country a MOT men to explain the jowett's car specialitis....
so it will be a jowett MOT expert....
and tell all jowett's owner the (jowett MOT) place.
maybe create a sign plate the MOT place will put up

peter