Failed MOT

unfortunately they are still getting through the net, i must try harder ;o) the panel isnt expensive & the constant supply of fire watching boys is plentyfull, so im pretty sure they will be around for a while.

It'll be cheaper to get it all welded up than fail the MOT again, but you want to get a quote somewhere else.

That sound a real bodge up.

Thought they had a special tool they use to "prod" the area and if soft the point of the tool penetrates and causes a fail?

If you have a hunt round he should have circled the rusty bits in yellow crayon..... If not go back and ask him to point to it.

What would you know Reg? You're only an "MOT Monkey" after all!

A fibreglass repair might not be to MoT standard but it doesn't mean it won't pass the MoT. If you're thinking about spending =A3150 on the repair then go out and buy a new or used MIG welder and keep it in the garage for when you do the rest of the car. ...or patch it up with newspaper and filler, get it MoT'd and sell it on to some unsuspecting sucker.

Why call him an MOT monkey? Most testers are honest skilled mechanics earning a reasonable living.

Secondly, the failure note said "Nearside front upper battery tray suspension component mounting" so it is not just a rusty battery tray. It appears to be close to the suspension too so I would want to do a proper repair.

The MOT is there to protect both the driver and the other road users from dangerous cars. As with anything it is a compromise but most of the time it does a decent job.

Alan

To me, that suggests he has an "us and them" attitude to it and will try and put one over on the tester. If you do that you deserve to get failed.

Follow the rules, work _with_ the tester, and it pays off. I haven't had a fail on any car I've had tested in the last three years (that's at least 12 cars).

I can't believe people can be so dumb. If you bodge it over before the first test you might get away with it, but get a fail and then a retest, the tester is going to be looking for a welded repair. It will take a very stupid tester or a very skilled filler to get a pass that way - and anyone who has that much skill with filler should have enough skill to repair it properly anyway.

Anyone who needs to buy a welder to do the job hasn't got enough skill to fix it properly. Good welding skills take a long time to learn.

Remind me never to buy a car from you.

It was a little bit of a tongue in cheek comment. So many people patch up structural areas with filler etc it's almost unbelievable. I have a car, which I didn't pay much for, where it is clear that part of the sills are fibreglass. I ripped out one side and reconstructed about

18" of sill and most of the wheel arch (with steel.) I put it in for the MoT and they passed it even though on the other side the sill deforms when it's jacked up. In fact it must have passed the last three MoTs like that.

Buying a mig welder really is an option if you think you might have to do a number of repairs. I've *always* been able to weld better than most of the MoT welding that I've seen.

Smiley would have helped ;-)

I've seen them. On classic restorations, which I do, it takes longer to cut out other people's bodges than it does to repair an unmolested rotbox. The Minx I'm working on now is a case in point; I just removed a

20mm L-section tacked over a small gap in a sill join and covered with filler. I just welded up the gap. It took less time than the original repair must have. In fact my Elf had huge sheets of fibreglass on the floor and rear seat tray when I got it - the latter is technically an MOT fail, within 30cm of the subframe mounts, plus sills filled with expanding foam gap filler!

It is, if you take the time to learn to weld properly. Otherwise it just ends up as bits of metal overlapping, glued in place with pigeon-poop! Oh yes, that's "MOT-standard"... do me a favour, please!

I wouldn't bother

A weld. An upside down weld. If that's gone the same way as my '95 Scrote did then just ahead of the back wheel you'll find he's ringed the problem area. It probably isn't worth repairing. The rusted section needs to be removed and a replacement bit welded in, painted and then sealed. The big problem comes when you come to remove the rusted bit.

The tester on mine spotted a 2 inch long corroded section. When I came to start the work to fix it I reckoned on replacing a 3 foot by 1 foot length of the underbody if I got lucky and found some unrotted metal to weld onto. A more skilled welder than me could probably have reduced that and you may have more metal left on your car than me, but from experience of my own, my brother in laws and anecdotal evidence, once the bottom of an Escort starts to rot you can't stop it.

Warwick

Chris Bolus ( snipped-for-privacy@RILEYELFb0lus.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

My brother bought a Triumph 1500 (FWD Dolomite).

He jacked it up using the jacking point.

The sill collapsed.

The newspaper it was made from had rotted. The bits that were still legible were dated about a decade before.

Heh. You know that befuddled feeling, when it dawns on you that you're winding the jack up, but the car's going down?

Or the interesting experience of pumping like mad on the jack only to see the seat towards the roof while all four wheels are staying firmly on the ground...

And since the Scrote battery tray is the number one choice for rot in any recent car you can be sure any MOT monkey is going to give it a long hard look even if the OP does try and disguise it. Taking it back to the original one will be a definite fail, and ought to be a slap on the wrist as well really!

FFS, no it wont. The battery tray condition has sod all to do with the MOT. It can be made of metal, cheese or removed completely, it makes no difference to the MOT tester.

John

The battery tray CAN be anything, BUT on an escort it is an integral part of the body, supporting the brake servo and the inner wing. there is also the matter of keeping engine fumes out of the cab. So yes a rotted battery tray gives rise to a failure (if bad enough) on the grounds of insecurity of suspension or brake components.

mrcheerful