2001 Corsa 1.2, fuel leak?

Never ceases to amaze me when people submit a car for an MoT with a headlamp not working. Possibly the easiest check to make, and yet they don't bother, and it's a guaranteed fail! Waste of an hour and ~£30.

It does?

Yup. However, I had something like 21 successive MOT passes (cars, motorbikes and vans) back in the day and then something failed for one of those 'known things' (it might have been my Bedford CD front wishbone ball joints or some such).

I changed them and then was told by another MOT tester that it was a waste of time as they 'are all like that within 6 weeks'.

For you maybe. ;-)

1) For me it would be potentially a waste of a lot more time and money going round replacing stuff I felt could be marginal (wiper blades, worn seatbelt, body rust) yet missing something that could mean it's a financial write off (like emissions).

2) A retest costs me nothing.

3) I drop my cars off with my mate at the local garage and he puts them though the test at a local testing station for me. If they fail on things that are economically viable he does them and re-submits the car for test. I get an IM or phone call when it's done (or sometimes the car left outside and the keys put through the letterbox). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Headlamp isnt a marginal fail, it works or it doesnt.

Yes most MOT places will change the bulb and pass it, some wont.

Its not worth the hastle of it failing just on the lamp then having to book it in, take it back, wait etc for the sake of 10 seconds checking and a £2.50 lamp.

You need to start using garages with better levels of customer service!

My car failed its last MOT on a tyre tread so the tester swapped in my spar= e wheel, which included removing and refitting the directional tyre, and su= bsequently passed it with no extra charge or time wasted.

Mathew

Sorry, I don't think I listed 'headlamp' in 'marginal' did I? ;-)

Quite and normally I would have but it wasn't my car and it costs me (us) nothing extra in time nor money to have it failed and re-rested, even for a headlamp.

The point though is this. My stepdaughters Rover failed it's (last) MOT on, amongst other things, emissions.

Now, say I had replaced for her a headlamp bulb, maybe the wiper blades, the washer motor, a frayed seat belt and a pair of tyres, to then have it written off for that 'bigger thing', what good has that extra work done me / her? ;-(

So, what I do now is bung it in and see what happens. Much cheaper and much easier. ;-)

YMMV etc.

Cheers, T i m

[...]

Apart from possibly the headlight bulb, none of those things fell below the legally required standard on the day before the MOT was due. Consequently, the car was being driven around in a dangerously unmaintained condition for a period of time before the MOT.

The 'good' that doing those things *before* they fell below the required standard would be the safety of your daughter, and that of other road users.

Imagine she was driving at night in rain. She has reduced vision due to having only one headlamp working. The screen is dirty, and she can't clean it because the washers don't work and the wiper blades are smearing the screen. She sees something in the road too late, swerves and brakes, but the below standard tyres fail to grip. She skids off the road, colliding head-on with a lamp post, and the frayed seat belt snaps...

Bear in mind the MOT is the minimum required legal standard. Vehicles should normally be maintained to a higher standard than that. For example, many independent tests show that tyre performance falls sharply once the tread depth is below 3mm, yet the legal minimum is 1.6mm. Consequently, the safety conscious motorist (or their father!) should consider renewing them when the grip level has deteriorated, not just when it's needed to pass an MOT.

But clearly not safer...

It would if it was my child.

Chris

In message , Chris Whelan writes

My 50 year old 'child' had a blown gasket, - water all disappeared, and her friendly local garage "put some stuff in the radiator" of her Y reg Focus. No leaks since then. She finally decided to get it fixed properly after I asked her if she could cope with finding herself at 80mph in the 3rd lane with a

*seriously* blown gasket.

blown gasket.

Sounds a bit like scaremongering to me. Any number of things *could* happen in life but a gasket leak isn't one I'd worry about when overtaking as failure isn't usually a "dangerous" event. Inconvenient, possibly terminal for the engine but not like brake failure.

A proper repair could cost more than the car's worth.

Tim

Engine loss would lead to loss of PAS, and within a short space of time brake servo.

Not for the items you listed in the case of your daughter's Rover however.

Chris

After you've used the vacuum up you'll have stopped, if the engine seized in gear then it'll stop you and you don't have any way of starting again.

[...]

The third push of the pedal on my Focus uses the last of the vacuum. It's likely that as the engine starts its death rattle, most drivers would declutch, and start to brake. If in the outside lane of a motorway, and you were able to coast to the hard shoulder, potentially you could run out of vacuum. You would certainly have no PAS, which for a driver that's not tried driving a PAS-equipped car without it would be quite a shock.

Of course, if it seizes and the driver does nothing, the effects if at speed on the motorway are likely to be even worse.

(It's actually a bit academic for the Focus; the check engine light would come on first, followed by going into cool-down mode, where every other firing cycle on each cylinder is missed, before the engine actually stopped.)

I think Gordon's point about properly maintaining a car from the point of view of safety is quite valid, if only from a 'lone female' perspective

Chris

Well I've not been following this thread from the start but how often does gasket failure lead to instant engine loss?

Of course if you were to ignore all the warning lights I suppose you would get engine loss but it wouldn't be instant.

My brother in laws Citroen ran for years with a bottle of gunk holding the water in.

Tim

Yep, getting from the 3rd lane to hard shoulder of a busy M way with a dead or dying engine is a very hazardous action.

Well, it would start with water loss, take it from there...

I remember going through the Radweld/Radflush/Radweld cycle many years ago, but that was before motorway speeds IIRC.

r.org>, Tim writes

So that leads to instant engine failure?

How many folk here have suffered complete instant power loss due gasket failure? Damned few I'll wager.

Tim

Correct.

Quite possibly.

Of course.

Yup and had that been the case it wouldn't have been a good plan. However, it wasn't.

Quite. Unforgettably her father was murdered in Thailand and her stepfather (me) doesn't see her from one month to the next. So, as you stated initially, the responsibility of all that is down to the driver. However, a tyre that failed an MOT could be safer than one that didn't (say a tyre with an excessively worn corner but generally deep tread pattern might not aquaplane in some conditions as easily as the legal one etc).

A wiper blade that failed the MOT could still function ok where it counted. A wiper blade that passed the MOT my be useless on the real road (wind lift).

Quite.

Ignoring the fact that she's not in this case, I do my best, as and when I can. Luckily my own child lives with us so I can sometimes get to drive / check her car myself to make sure she's (and her b/f who shares it with her) keeping on top of it.

Cheers, T i m

A blown gasket doesn't usually mean immediate engine failure, though.

It would just run rough as f*ck for a bit, until the overheating killed it.

But by the time that happened, most drivers would be stopped on the hard shoulder.