Datsuncog's Heaps: Sept 2023 - Another Year's T-Met Exemption Certificate...

[Guest Hooli]

Do they not mark fails with yellow chalk over there?

[Datsuncog]

On 9/19/2018 at 12:08 PM, Hooli said:

Do they not mark fails with yellow chalk over there?

Nope. Oftentimes they'll come and fetch the driver from the 'waiting area' (three battered chairs behind a railing) and take them under the vehicle on the ramps to point out the problem, as with the Yaris' second fail last month, but I've never had anything marked up in chalk.

I'd kind of assumed the problem would be rather obvious, judging by the Corporal Frazer-esque tone oul Derek used to damn the Subaru to failure, but I can see nothing untoward.

Now, that's not to say the brakes don't need some TLC as the handbrake is poor and the 'wob wob wob' noise audible while braking from below 20mph suggests a problem with a sticky caliper or some such - but that's not what it failed on, and the claimed 'clean rotten' pipe is invisible to my eyes...

[Guest Hooli]

Bit of an arse then, no point in going back to ask grumpy I guess?

[Datsuncog]

^^^ Nah, with about a dozen testers running different shifts out of each station, chances of finding the same guy again are minimal. Plus the station's a 30 mile round trip, and you can't phone them up. Plus he clearly didn't like me anyway.

I'll phone my preferred garage and see if they can take a look at it. The current MOT doesn't run out until the first week in October, so I've a bit of wriggle room yet.

If it turns out there's no corrosion to that pipe at all - which is certainly how it looked last night - I'll book a retest and then lodge a formal complaint if it then passes, to claim back the £18.50 retest fee and possibly more for wasted fuel, time and garage bills.

The Northern Ireland MOT system has its pluses and minuses, but if you get a cunty tester they will either find something to fail you on, or invent a reason. It's denied at official level, but everyone who works there knows there are re-test targets to meet, and testers are expected to fail a proportion of vehicles each day. How they do that is left up to them.

I generally try to get a late test appointment (as close to 8pm as possible) in the hope that they've already made their fail quota for the day, but it doesn't always work.

At least this lad didn't hammer a hole through a perfectly solid steel sill using a screwdriver just so he could fail it on rust, like one tester did to my Fiesta many years ago.

UPDATE: the garage can take it in next Monday to have a squizz. I'll be very interested in their views...

[Datsuncog]

FFS.

Got home to find the high winds had managed to blow one of the recycling tubs, which had a brick on it as per recycling service instructions because the lids are rubbish, over the 6ft fence from the yard and onto the roof of the Subaru in the driveway.

Several dents and deep scratches front to back, then the trail of destruction goes down the driver's side where evidence shows it spent a happy day being blown from the wall into the front wing and back again, ad nauseam.

As the kids probably no longer say any more, I can't even.

That's what I get for gloating last night about how remarkably straight the bodywork was on this thing.

Daaah.

[Guest Hooli]

Ffs it's not been a good day for cars and bins with you an xtriple suffering.

[beko1987]

Sounds like my Laguna. The OMGDEATHRUSTYPIPE advisory it got the year before last vanished when I got it MOT'd with a 'Nah mate, it's fine under there'

[Datsuncog]

Currently freezing my nutsack off at Trooperslane rail halt. That's the thing about autumn, it sorta flips between quite bright and slightly leafy and a reasonable 12°c temperature, fine for a sweater and light jacket, and then one morning it's still bright and slightly leafy but 8°c with a light breeze and it feels rather like I'm going to die of exposure before the train arrives...

Right, Subaru of assorted honks and squeaks was deposited at Mechanic of Choice this morning, to fettle the OMGDETHTRAP brake pipes for the MOT retest.

I asked him to also take a general look and see whether there's a caliper binding, or (worse) a warped disc causing the wob wob wob noise under light braking to a halt... MrsDC had mentioned the front o/s disc radiating heat after she'd taken it out for a jaunt not long after I bought it, but I could never seem to replicate that again. Hmmm.

The whistling/squeaking noise when changing gear has been traced, possibly, to the clutch pedal rather than the engine bay - insofar as the noise manifests reliably whenever the pedal is released, even when the engine's switched off. I think that rules out the boost pipe theory.

I'm in two minds about whether it's just the pedal hinge squeaking, or if it's the rather more sinister sound of air escaping... there's been no drop in the clutch fluid reservoir level, and no change in pedal feel or difficulty in swapping cogs, so I dunno if I'm just being over-sensitive to a noise that could have been present for months - but I wasn't aware of it up to now due to the extreme gruntiness of the car's knackered back box.

 

I'd hoped to have a more detailed look over the weekend, but ended up replacing the guttering on the house which rather ate into my capacity to do car stuff.

I might go for a guddle later in the drivers footwell with my trusty can of 4-in1 and see if that helps at all - or, of course, I could employ my time-honoured technique of just turning the stereo up some more...

 

We shall see.

[Datsuncog]

Had heard nothing by 4pm, so gave Mechanic of Choice a bell...

"Hi there, left a Subaru Forester in with you this morning for some brake work... any update on it?"

"Errr... what was it again?"

"Forester. Subaru. Silver. MOT work on the brake pipes."

"Hang on, I'll see what he says..."

*Clonk of phone handset/footsteps/door opening/hammering... then distant shouting, followed by the aforementioned noises in reverse*
 

"Er, yeah, not quite ready yet... um... haven't actually got as far as taking the wheel off yet."

 

Full marks for candour, but no marks for reliability.

Still, hopefully the Sub will be safe from flying recycling bins overnight...

[Datsuncog]

Right, yesterday came and went with no news about the Subaru's status, which wasn't a bad thing necessarily as I'd no time to go and pick the bugger up.

A quick and mildly terse call this morning to Mechanic of Choice confirmed that oh yeah, it was done, all ready to pick up. As if I should have known that through telepathy.

So let's see whether:

a] there was indeed galloping rot in the rear o/s pipe, as Dour Derek so doomily informed me, and

b] if they've any bright ideas about the odd wob wob wob noise that only manifests when braking gently from 10mph to a standstill. The cheaper the fix is, the better.

I also plan to do a bit of lubrication around the clutch pedal later, to see if that makes a blind bit of difference to the wheezy chirpy noise that's started to manifest when releasing the clutch. Hopefully, it won't need a new clutch!*

Accordingly, I've booked a re-test for Saturday morning. Over in Mallusk, this time - I'm scundered with the Larne centre and their mardy testers. At least blokey who failed the Yaris twice didn't look at me like I'd just murdered some kittens.

 

 

*of course it'll need a new fucking clutch or something, this is me we're talking about.

[Datsuncog]

Well well well.

Quelle fucking suprise.

Mechanic of Choice and several others at the garage all had a good long look underneath, and... could find absolutely nothing amiss with the o/s rear brake pipe. A tiny, tiny, tiny bit of scab which brushed off with fingers - and that was it.

So they cleaned and greased them all, for the princely sum of £20, and told me to bring it back if the test centre fails it again - as in their opinion they can see absolutely nothing for it to fail on.

Roll on Saturday. I feel a formal complaint in the works...

[They_all_do_that_sir]

Well well well.

 

Quelle fucking suprise.

 

Mechanic of Choice and several others at the garage all had a good long look underneath, and... could find absolutely nothing amiss with the o/s rear brake pipe. A tiny, tiny, tiny bit of scab which brushed off with fingers - and that was it.

 

So they cleaned and greased them all, for the princely sum of £20, and told me to bring it back if the test centre fails it again - as in their opinion they can see absolutely nothing for it to fail on.

 

Roll on Saturday. I feel a formal complaint in the works...

Autoworx or elsewhere? Johnny can occasionally forget he has your car .

 

Regardless of where it is, they had a golden opportunity to replace all your pipes for no reason but didn't rip you off which is comforting.

 

Sent from my F3211 using Tapatalk

[Datsuncog]

On 9/26/2018 at 6:53 PM, They_all_do_that_sir said:

Autoworx or elsewhere? Johnny can occasionally forget he has your car .

Regardless of where it is, they had a golden opportunity to replace all your pipes for no reason but didn't rip you off which is comforting.

Yup, Autoworx indeed!

Quite right, they could have got the arm in but didn't - Johnny reckoned it was an "absolute disgrace" it was failed on effectively nothing.

So I'm forty quid down needlessly for the garage inspection and retest fee, on top of the two Yaris fails for exactly the same thing, also a rear o/s pipe...

Hmmm. My suspicion side is suspicious.

If Dour Derek had just said, "bit of rust there, needs sorted" then I woulda sucked it up - but it was the whole Laurence Olivier-style amateur dramatics about "clean rotten" and "could go pop at any time" that were demonstrably false statements- and that's what's really pissed me off here.

Can anyone here say... The Nolan Show?

Mebbe worth me approaching them, because it's bound to be a nice wee moneyspinner for DVA to keep getting those £18.50 retest fees...

[angle]

the Busy Bee garage in Ringmer, who were a shower of useless bastards and seemed to hate me and my cars but were the only accessible garage near to where I was working at the time

If that was 2002-ish, you have my belated apologies (although I only sold petrol and did valeting). Julian is, um, 'a character'. By which I mean a bastard.

[Datsuncog]

If that was 2002-ish, you have my belated apologies (although I only sold petrol and did valeting). Julian is, um, 'a character'. By which I mean a bastard.

Heh, it was 2003! I was never on first name terms with blokey there, but long story short he killed two of my cars... I may elaborate later on!

 

I was young and broke and working at Ringmer Community College (as was) as a teaching assistant, and didn't know the area at all - I'm guessing I'm not the only one with a tale to tell??

[Tadhg Tiogar]

^^^ Nah, with about a dozen testers running different shifts out of each station, chances of finding the same guy again are minimal. Plus the station's a 30 mile round trip, and you can't phone them up. Plus he clearly didn't like me anyway....

Ulster sez No?

[Guest Hooli]

I'd be proper pissed off at that dodgy fail. Trouble is if the system there is the same as here the appeal procedure depends on you not fixing the car so they can examine it & decide if the fail was accurate.

 

Obviously all of us have spare transport, but how would that work for normal people?

[Captain Furious]

I’ve been through this in the past with brake pipes, repeated fails even though there didn’t appear to be anything really wrong with them. I did the usual, clean them up, grease them, still failed. The testers reasoning was that the latest wisdom passed down from VOSA says if they have corrosion, however far the corrosion extends proud of the surface it also extends into the pipe, so cleaning them up is not acceptable.

 

Trouble is, the days are gone when you simply take it to another garage for a 2nd opinion, now it’s already on the computer their attention will be immediately drawn there and I’m willing to bet not many MOT testers are going to pass something that has already been failed elsewhere. In the end I was that fed up I just had them all replaced at a different garage, he may have torpedoed any chance of getting them passed, but he wasn’t getting my money

[angle]

Heh, it was 2003! I was never on first name terms with blokey there, but long story short he killed two of my cars... I may elaborate later on!

 

I was young and broke and working at Ringmer Community College (as was) as a teaching assistant, and didn't know the area at all - I'm guessing I'm not the only one with a tale to tell??

Please please please tell me that Dave Erritty is responsible for your abiding love of shonky Renaults, I need a laugh. By 2003 I'd have left for uni and would have been (entirely unsuccessfully) trying to reinvent myself as a shaggy haired indie rock god rather than a socially inept maths geek from a small Sussex village, but you probably taught my brother.

 

I think the only outright dishonest thing I saw working there was them using a Volvo that had been left there for work while the owner was on holiday as a courtesy car after the Punto they normally used did its head gasket, but they were a bit shit. They used to send cars off-site for MOTs and I remember a Sunny coming back three times in the space of a day with increasingly abusive notes about the quality of the welding they'd done...

[The_Equalizer]

Might it just be worth being philosophical about it and just except that's the way life goes now and again? Purely for your peace of mind and make Mallusk your centre of choice from now on? For the last few years my brake pipes have an annual covering of this:

 

 

Which comes in a handy aerosol and doesn't go on too thick as to look like you're covering things up. 

I also give the car a bit of a clean inside and out. I doubt it makes much difference, but my theory is at least it looks like you give some kind of stuff about it and the MoT process. On the other hand the wife things I'm a bit of a numpty for doing it.

[Datsuncog]

On 9/26/2018 at 8:29 PM, Captain Furious said:

I’ve been through this in the past with brake pipes, repeated fails even though there didn’t appear to be anything really wrong with them. I did the usual, clean them up, grease them, still failed. The testers reasoning was that the latest wisdom passed down from VOSA says if they have corrosion, however far the corrosion extends proud of the surface it also extends into the pipe, so cleaning them up is not acceptable.

Well indeed, and I've been there too - with the Yaris last month there was plainly a bit of scab (hey, it's a 13 yr old car) so I could see where they were coming from - but with this, there was literally no corrosion bar the merest sprinkle of dust in one or two spots, which comes off completely just by rubbing a fingertip over it. No pitting, nothing. They look like new now; in fact, if the garage had told me they'd replaced all the pipes and billed me accordingly I'd have had no grounds to disbelieve them...

 

Quote

Trouble is, the days are gone when you simply take it to another garage for a 2nd opinion, now it’s already on the computer their attention will be immediately drawn there and I’m willing to bet not many MOT testers are going to pass something that has already been failed elsewhere. In the end I was that fed up I just had them all replaced at a different garage, he may have torpedoed any chance of getting them passed, but he wasn’t getting my money

It's always been a bit different in NI where all tests are carried out in government testing centres, currently operated by the Department for Infrastructure; but it'll be going through a different test centre anyway for the re-test since the one who failed it had no Saturday slots available.

Nothing gets marked up here with yellow chalk, so literally all that's on the system for the new tester to look at is "o/s rear brake pipe corroded". Well, it's definitely not, and that's the opinion of three mechanics who have looked over it.

We shall see. Saturday morning is crunch time...

 

On 9/26/2018 at 8:36 PM, The_Equalizer said:

Might it just be worth being philosophical about it and just except that's the way life goes now and again? Purely for your peace of mind and make Mallusk your centre of choice from now on? For the last few years my brake pipes have an annual covering of this:

Which comes in a handy aerosol and doesn't go on too thick as to look like you're covering things up. 

I also give the car a bit of a clean inside and out. I doubt it makes much difference, but my theory is at least it looks like you give some kind of stuff about it and the MoT process. On the other hand the wife things I'm a bit of a numpty for doing it.

Yeah, I always go all-out to wash, vacuum and polish the bastard to within an inch of its life - people round here must know I've an MOT due as that's the only time I ever use stuff like tyre shine and Back-to-Black! I always clip the rear seat belts in too, so they don't have to guddle down the back of the squab - I used to think they appreciated such touches, but mebbe not...

I very much appreciate your stoicism! In truth, I was quite philosophical fifteen years ago when my newly-restored Viva was failed on a recently-replaced brake hose that looked 100% (even once it was off) and on having painted the brake lines with Smoothrite as part of the general underbody tidy-up ("I can't assess the condition...") - so I had to then strip the paint off. I've always avoided painting anything underneath since.

I was Quite Cross two years ago when the silver Laguna was also failed on a brake hose that had no obvious sign of wear, and I was then stung for £200 to get the front pair replaced (never went back there again).

I was Pretty Blazing Mad at the Yaris antics last month (all three tests were carried out at Mallusk), and I'm now Absolutely Fucking Furious at this latest development; not just the unnecessary money it's cost me at a time when our finances are highly constrained, but all the time it's wasted through me having to take time off work to leave it down at the garage and whatnot.

Northern Ireland MOT Testing Centres rip people off by failing cars with nothing wrong with them in order to meet arbitrary targets and fill re-test slots. They've been doing it for years. There, I've said it. This'll be the fifth time I've been through in two months.

What actually annoys me more is that I know there are some problems with the Subaru - but the tester didn't pick up on any of them. I wasn't even expecting it to pass. There's a clonk from the front that suggests a worn ball joint; the drop links are shagged and the handbrake is marginal. I'm not sure which ball joint is knackered, and I can't really assess how worn the drop links are; I was kinda hoping they'd be able to let me know where exactly the known problems are on this car, even just as advisories, so I could fix them and also alert me to any I didn't know about. But Dour Derek didn't seem to do any of this. He invented a problem, and then lied to me about the condition of a component in order to meet a fail target. The rear o/s pipe is demonstrably not "clean rotten". It is not "about to pop at any minute". It just isn't.

So now, even if it does pass on Saturday, I'm always going to be wondering if something else major is likely to blow as I have zero confidence that last Monday's test was properly carried out.

Possibly my fury is heightened here somewhat because I also work for the Department for Infrastructure (dum dum duuuuuummm!). Which is why I know they regularly try this shit on, that no-one ever gets anywhere when they try to complain about it, and that's why I want to finally bring the fire down upon their accursed heads...

Hell hath no fury like a civil servant having to shovel shit because of a colleague's fuckups.

[Datsuncog]

On 9/26/2018 at 8:30 PM, angle said:

Please please please tell me that Dave Erritty is responsible for your abiding love of shonky Renaults, I need a laugh. By 2003 I'd have left for uni and would have been (entirely unsuccessfully) trying to reinvent myself as a shaggy haired indie rock god rather than a socially inept maths geek from a small Sussex village, but you probably taught my brother.

I think the only outright dishonest thing I saw working there was them using a Volvo that had been left there for work while the owner was on holiday as a courtesy car after the Punto they normally used did its head gasket, but they were a bit shit. They used to send cars off-site for MOTs and I remember a Sunny coming back three times in the space of a day with increasingly abusive notes about the quality of the welding they'd done...

Heh, yes the name Dave Errity seems to ring a bell, somehow! Was he on the staff? PE, maybe?? Don't seem to recall any shonky Renaults in the staff car park, other than a white R5 Campus driven by another TA, but then I normally dumped mine round the back of the library...

 

Yes, I dropped my Mk2 Fiesta Ghia off at the Busy Bee to get it MOT'd (and yes, off-site so I assume they took it to somewhere in Lewes); when I came to pick it up it had a fail for corrosion. I asked how much it would cost to get it welded for a pass; cue lots of gabbling and flat-out refusals; the car was rotten, rotten, unrepairable, unweldable, unfixable. Wouldn't touch it, wouldn't do it. Somewhat crestfallen (it had only 42k on the clock and, although typically Ford-scabby, didn't appear that bad to me), I sold it for £50... only to see it still tootling around Hove a year later. Hmm. Though maybe that was a lucky miss, if their welding skills were none too brilliant...

No, the real annoyance came when I started dailying my Viva HC to get to the school after the Fiesta's disposal; it soon became clear I was losing compression on steep hills and I booked it in to get the head gasket changed, as this was a common enough fault on the little 1256cc units. I had a gasket set and all; I just didn't have a torque wrench or a covered workspace (living in a flat over a shop) and it seemed to make more sense (in February) to let a professional do it... "professional".

As agreed, I dropped the Viva off at about 8.30 at the Busy Bee and, as instructed, left it round the side, still idling.

I'd thought they might phone me with an update on progress, but they didn't - so at about 4.30 when Homework Club finished, I set off back down the road to the garage.

The Viva was still round the side of the garage exactly where I'd left it, still idling. It'd burnt half a tank of fuel, and the engine was red-hot and had steamed nearly all its coolant out. The car was fitted with a Kenlowe electric fan, but it had to be switched on and off manually and, obviously, there'd been no-one around to do that.

They'd clearly forgotten all about it, and left it there to idle for eight hours straight.

Words could not really convey my disbelief and rage, which got worse when Head Boss Man (Julian?) breezily advised that if I just left it there overnight, he'd look at it in the morning. I'd already explained that morning that I needed it ready by the end of the day, as I had no other means to get myself home to Hangleton. There were no more buses from the village to Lewes or Brighton.

White-lipped with fury, I marched back out to drive it away, and there then followed something of a shouting match where blokey seemed to be under the impression that I somehow owed him £80 - despite him having admitted that my car had been untouched since I dropped it off, and what had started off as a slight compression loss had now degenerated into a full OMGHGF while under his 'care'.

It's all a little hazy now, but I believe I may have offered him a few suggestions about potential locations for his £80 invoice, and juddered off in a screaming, steaming wreck of a Viva. I stopped at the small service station near the Cuilfall Tunnel and emptied about two watering cans worth into the stinking hot rad, which on reflection probably only served to make matters worse.

So yeah. All I'll say is, the Busy Bee Garage was jolly lucky TrustPilot wasn't around in those days, or I may have left a fairly strongly-worded review...

Still, makes for a good story!

[Tadhg Tiogar]

Good luck with that....

[Asimo]

There are various recall notices about Subaru brake pipe corrosion, I remember getting one for my Legacy for instance.

It is something to do with the pipes corroding where they cannot be seen because the fuel tank or it's cover is in the way. Maybe tester bloke was just covering his arse because of these recalls?

[The_Equalizer]

Yeah, I always go all-out to wash, vacuum and polish the bastard to within an inch of its life - people round here must know I've an MOT due as that's the only time I ever use stuff like tyre shine and Back-to-Black! I always clip the rear seat belts in too, so they don't have to guddle down the back of the squab - I used to think they appreciated such touches, but mebbe not...

 

I should have known that a smart chap like yourself would have done the obvious stuff and a bit more to boot. 

 

It's no consolation, but I have never really had any bother with MoT test centres this side of the Irish Sea and, back in Blighty, we've used the same place for the last forty years.

 

Garages on the other hand have been a whole tale of woe which, no matter how much how much skin I remove from my knuckles or how cold and wet the driveway is, I always remind myself that it's nothing compared to the grief I have had over the years from various garages. That's not to say the the one I now use isn't good, but even that has to be negotiated in a certain fashion.

 

My Dad tried to warm me from the early days of passing my test, but, as they say, there's no way like learning the hard way. So, when the brakes failed on my 1964 Beetle three months after passing, and egged on by a 'mate', I took it to a certain "Speedy Fitter" in Catford, South London to remedy the situation. It was obviously a far better idea than my Dad's offer of help in the comfort of the well equipped double garage (with pit) at the bottom of my parents' garden. "Speedy Fitter" for a quick solution it had to be. 

 

Basically the visit cost me over a week, all of my M&S Christmas bonus money from my part-time job, and of course the brakes weren't really fixed because "we're not used to working on these cars". But that wasn't the highlight. The best bit was the test drive to see if the brakes were working which literally lasted three minutes until the VW started shaking violently, the "Speedy Fitter" mechanic shout stop in no uncertain terms and the near-side front wheel disappeared up a Catford side street. But, hang on, it was even better than that because right behind us was the local plod - I kid you not. This was one of those occasions when being a totally naive 17-year-old paid dividends as it was quite obvious to the police man that the cause of the now three wheeled bug was the bloke in the "Speedy Fitter" garb. I'm still not sure why this wasn't taken any further, but the police managed to find a jack from somewhere, the wheel was retrieved as were enough of the wheel bolts to put it back on (securely this time) and off we went on our merry way. I can't say I remember much about nursing that car back to my parents' house, but needless to say it did get fixed, by my Dad, in the comfort of the well equipped double garage (with pit) at the bottom of my parents' garden. 

 

Still, as you said, it makes for a good story.

[Datsuncog]

On 9/27/2018 at 4:23 PM, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Good luck with that....

Heh, I don't need luck. I have righteous fury to guide me.

Unless of course there is some rust somewhere that neither the garage nor myself spotted, in which case I'm going to look like a massive wang.

 

Heading over to Mallusk now, kids! We shall see what the re-test pronouncement is, within the hour.

[mrbenn]

Good luck!

[Datsuncog]

Clearly they're running a bit behind already this morning...

[They_all_do_that_sir]

Clearly they're running a bit behind already this morning...

 

20180929_103252.jpg

Good luck lad

 

Sent from my F3211 using Tapatalk

[Datsuncog]

Cheers all!

I'm hoping the shiteworthy Avensis ahead of me will act as some sort of good luck talisman...