MOT

DM · 12 May 2011 at 20:43

Firestar_3x said:
The choice on what to shortcut is down to the guy being paid 18k - 22k a year to sit in cars and enter numbers in a computer, he doesn't care about BMW's reputation all he wants to do is get his remedial tasks done and move onto something more interesting.

Garages take shortcuts with loads of service related items so why should MOT testing be any different.

Because MOT's have for years had a nasty habit of coming back to haunt car dealers big and small.

As for the monkey on 18k, hes probably also on some sort of bonus or maybe not, but why would they turn away a nice lumpy job in this instance replacing the cats.

Anyway i know main dealers cut corners, i just dont think MOTs are one of them.

Firestar_3x · 12 May 2011 at 20:45

DM said:
Anyway i know main dealers cut corners, i just dont think MOTs are one of them.

I/We could also be overlooking the fact the the first garage simply failed the car because they wanted some money out of him. AKA Kwik Fit brake scam.

Anyways i've got major trust issues with not only main dealers but most of the spanner monkeys.

DM · 12 May 2011 at 20:48

Firestar_3x said:
I/We could also be overlooking the fact the the first garage simply failed the car because they wanted some money out of him. AKA Kwik Fit brake scam.

Anyways i've got major trust issues with not only main dealers but most of the spanner monkeys.

Dont get me wrong i hate the lot of them believe you me, common sense just tells me that some corners get cut, ones with no reason behind cutting them, that also might come back to **** you dont get cut so much.

And yes i agree the first monkey might have just been a chancer.

jon.bda · 12 May 2011 at 20:50

[TW]Fox;19122410 said:
If it was a genuine MOT failure they'd have made a fortune replacing all the cats or something - there was no benefit to the dealer of passing a car that would otherwise fail.

As already mentioned, all it may of needed was to warm the car a little more to get it through...its nothing sinister tbh...

[TW]Fox · 12 May 2011 at 20:51

jon.bda said:
As already mentioned, all it may of needed was to warm the car a little more to get it through...its nothing sinister tbh...

Could well be, but really, when you are paying somebody for a service they are the expert so they should know that - hence why I pointed it out

What else is the customer supposed to do? We left the MOT centre thinking the car had some sort of serious, expensive fault! Surely thats not right.

jon.bda · 12 May 2011 at 20:57

[TW]Fox;19122564 said:
Could well be, but really, when you are paying somebody for a service they are the expert so they should know that - hence why I pointed it out

What else is the customer supposed to do? We left the MOT centre thinking the car had some sort of serious, expensive fault! Surely thats not right.

It might also depend on the equipment used. To keep it Beemer related, we recently took an X5 diseasel for its first mot...couldn't even get the equipment to register a thing, despite revving the knackers off it...

DM · 12 May 2011 at 20:58

Princey said:
[Hijack]

I'm due and MOT and I've heard there can be issues with having an LSD when doing the handbrake test? Something about applying the handbrake when the rollers are going around and not from a stop. Any truth in this?

[/hijack]

They just do it off the rollers with a meter, dont worry about it.

jon.bda · 12 May 2011 at 21:01

DM said:
They just do it off the rollers with a meter, dont worry about it.

May take them a while to find the decelerometer though..and remember how to use it!!!

Joshy · 12 May 2011 at 21:16

[TW]Fox;19122564 said:
What else is the customer supposed to do? We left the MOT centre thinking the car had some sort of serious, expensive fault! Surely thats not right.

And what else is the garage supposed to do? They tested the vehicle with their equipment and for whatever reason it failed. They used the same piece of equipment that must have passed hundreds of cars in its lifetime, what realistically are you expecting the garage to do?

It would have not come down to user error. Even the illiterate dribbling monkey that most people here seem to think the modern day mechanic is can use an emissions tester with success, neither is it realistically going to be the tester fudging the results because he isn't going to put his license and his livelihood on the line to wind you up.

It is just one of those things.

Did you bother to get an emissions print out from the original garage that failed it?

Firestar_3x · 12 May 2011 at 21:20

Joshy said:
It would have not come down to user error.

Nice to know you stood next to him whilst he tested this car..................

Joshy · 12 May 2011 at 21:23

Firestar_3x said:
Nice to know you stood next to him whilst he tested this car..................

The bloke who did the test probably does nothing but MOTs day in and day out. I'd like to give the guy a bit of slack and think that he can put a probe up an exhaust and press a few buttons considering he would have done it hundreds of times before.

Firestar_3x · 12 May 2011 at 21:27

Just because someone repeats an action day in day out doesn't make him immune from human error, the opposite can actually be true, when someone becomes complacent and either cuts corners or simply doesn't do something, then we have the human failure factor in which the more you repeat a task the more likely you are to get it wrong one time.

Besides you seem to be looking at this from one side, and that's the MOT tester, who's to say the car was as warm on the first test as it was on the second.

Joshy · 12 May 2011 at 21:33

Firestar_3x said:
Besides you seem to be looking at this from one side, and that's the MOT tester

And nearly everyone else seems to be looking at this from the other side, as the 'wronged' customer even though it is perfectly possible that the test was carried out fine and it failing was just one of those things.

[TW]Fox · 12 May 2011 at 21:37

Joshy said:
And nearly everyone else seems to be looking at this from the other side, as the 'wronged' customer even though it is perfectly possible that the test was carried out fine and it failing was just one of those things.

It's 'just one of those things' for a car with no faults in full working order to fail an MOT is it Joshy?

I suspect they just whacked it straight in and didn't warm the cats up properly - perhaps because they didn't know the N53 engined cars have 4 of them.

Joshy · 12 May 2011 at 21:43

[TW]Fox;19122932 said:
It's 'just one of those things' for a car with no faults in full working order to fail an MOT is it Joshy?

**** happens, especially when a machine is doing all of the work without needing any real input from the user.

Its not like they failed it for bald tyres when the car had 7mm tread all around. Something along those lines is inexcusable.

[TW]Fox · 12 May 2011 at 21:45

Joshy said:
**** happens,

Typical motor trade attitude.

If you charge people for a service, ensure that **** doesn't happen.

Joshy · 12 May 2011 at 22:12

[TW]Fox;19123006 said:
Typical motor trade attitude.

If you charge people for a service, ensure that **** doesn't happen.

Typical fussy customer attitude with unrealistic expectations and are quick to **** off us incompetent knuckle dragging monkeys to anybody within earshot the second something goes even remotely wrong

.

Put your dislike/distrust of the motor trade aside for a moment, what realistically are you expecting the tester to do? Seriously? He's got 50 minutes to get that car tested off, the same emissions tester that has probably already passed a couple of cars that day alone is saying that this BMW is a fail. He'd be adamant that he had not done anything wrong because this is the way that he always tests cars and he doesn't usually have problems. You'd like to think that he would stop, investigate and go through the test process again, but that is an utterly ridiculous thought. Is he supposed to do that with every single car that fails an emissions test? No. He follows what the computer says and trusts its results. It said fail so it was a fail. You happened to take it to another station and it passed.

Maybe the guy who tested it first didn't do it properly maybe the drive to the other station a few days later was enough to clear the system up and make the car a pass, maybe the original tester was a bit dodgy, maybe the BMW tester was a bit dodgy making a polluting vehicle with knackered cats pass (

) , maybe the guy at BMW fudged the results for whatever, maybe the BMW tester didn't use the machine properly, or maybe just **** happened. I don't know, but there are too many maybes here to happily go about slagging the place off and playing the massively wronged customer.

[TW]Fox · 12 May 2011 at 22:18

Joshy said:
Typical fussy customer attitude with unrealistic expectations

Yea, how unrealistic to expect a car to fail it's MOT only if the car is faulty and requires work to repair it.

Put your dislike/distrust of the motor trade aside for a moment, what realistically are you expecting the tester to do?

Perform an MOT test such that if the car meets the required standards and has no faults, it passes, and if the car has faults, it fails.

What do you think the bill would have been had the original testing station been asked to repair the car...

I don't think there was any fudging going on - it's a facelift E60 not an E34, if my E39 is still flying through MOT's with no emissions issues after nearly 10 years and 200,000 miles it's not exactly a leap of faith to suggest that a much much newer and lower mileage example is probably unlikely to be faulty

My personal opinion is that for one reason or another the car was not allowed to sufficiently warm the cats prior to the MOT. I've no idea why not. Perhaps he ran out of time. perhaps he didn't realise the car had 4 cats and therefore it wasn't going to be nice and toasty right through after 20 seconds, who knows. The bottom line is that for whatever reason an inappropriate fail was issued.

Hence, when somebody asked for experiences - I simply posted mine and explained I'd had a mixed bag - no issues with my car, issues with the other car. We've only gone on about it for an entire thread because Biggles 'The MOT tester is never wrong' Pip took issue with it and has now swapped the baton to you

In your honest opinion what is the customer supposed to do? Most people will assume the car is broken if it fails its MOT!

realscot · 12 May 2011 at 22:21

jon.bda said:
May take them a while to find the decelerometer though..and remember how to use it!!!

Not really, I use it almost every day. Get plenty of 4wd's in that can't be done on the rollers.

And yes make sure you tell the tester that the car has an LSD that is unsuitable for brake rollers before he tears your diff to bits.

BTW FOX, i'd have ran it a second time. I'd have thought the same as you, hmmm 07 BMW failing emissions, thats strange, lets give it a bit longer to warm up and try again. Either that or test drive it then try again.

Does anyone else test drive cars while doing the MOT? I test drive every car, its amazing what you hear/feel on the road that you don't see on the ramp, wheel bearings being the main one. For any customers who hate the idea of us driving their cars, we're allowed to, infact it should be compulsory, deal with it.

Princey · 12 May 2011 at 22:31

realscot said:
Not really, I use it almost every day. Get plenty of 4wd's in that can't be done on the rollers.

And yes make sure you tell the tester that the car has an LSD that is unsuitable for brake rollers before he tears your diff to bits.

What is the alternative to the rollers and do most MOT stations have the alternative?