Want to sell my old car, but no MOT

[SelenaLouise]

Hi all

Took my car for an MOT last week and it failed

Its an old VW Polo (R reg 1998) its cost me so much money just to keep it going and now I just want to sell it on.

I’ve put the specs into Auto trader and the prices that came up were £700, then £875 etc etc. It has Tax until end October.

Seeing that it has no MOT, what are my chances of selling it on and how should I go about doing this?

Thanks


Selena

[Poppy9]

What did it fail the MOT on?

[Hintza]

Did you not get an indication of how much it will cost to get it through its MOT? If it is worth say £700 with an MOT you might only get £200 without. You need to work out whether it is worth getting it through an MOT or not.

[SelenaLouise]

Ok I don’t have the list in front of me but from memory the things it failed for on the MOT were:

Windscreen wipers not working properly (cheap enough to fix)
Power steering pipes gone (I think they've corroded.)
Exhaust gone (they had fixed the catalytic converter about 6 months ago)
The lights aren’t aligned properly (don’t know which ones)

There is some other stuff but I think that’s the main stuff.

My Dad says it might cost a few hundred to fix.

[anewman]

Biggest expense to sort would be the exhaust and power steering pipes. Phone a couple of places and ask for a quote on those two and be prepared and know what parts of the exhaust you need - will only take you half an hour to get a handful of quotes and you'll have a better idea where you are.

If you only need one section and not the cat it should be about £60 for that using a pattern part. I have no experience with power steering systems, but I suspect they work in a similar manner to brake pipes, so I guess that would cost about £50-100.

[paulfoel]

If the price of getting it fixed is less than the value of the car, then its worth doing.

Unfortunately, you'll be lucky to get £50 for it with no mot.

[Lum]

Has the existing MOT actually expired, if so then it's illegal for someone to just turn up and drive it away which severely narrows down the potential buyers.

Can you post the actual faults listed on the MOT failure sheet? "Exhaust gone" doesn't mean much, could mean rust, could just be blowing somewhere, may be fixable by just welding up the hole.

The lights is just going to be the headlight alignment, you don't align any other lights. A nice MOT tester with a bit of common sense would likely fix that for you during the MOT if it passes on everything else.

The power steering one is the killer, is it pipes or hoses that have gone? Hoses are a lot easier to replace.

[SelenaLouise]

When I get home I'll post the actual facts because I dont have the information here with me.

Oh yea there was also something wrong with the brakes but again I'll post that when I get home.

The power steering problem is due to the pipes I believe, because my Dad had someone look at this sometimes last year and we had to get something welded back then.

[goldspanners]

as others have said any car (unless its rare) without an MOT has a very small price tag, usually under £100.
if its worth £800 as you say then it may be worth spending a few quid to fix it,use second hand or pattern parts, dont go near a vw dealer. you could use GSF for parts if needed, they are usually pretty cheap for vw parts.

[paulfoel]

as others have said any car (unless its rare) without an MOT has a very small price tag, usually under £100.
if its worth £800 as you say then it may be worth spending a few quid to fix it,use second hand or pattern parts, dont go near a vw dealer. you could use GSF for parts if needed, they are usually pretty cheap for vw parts.

I got rid of an old metro not so long ago. It failed the MOT and cost to fix was over £500 so not worth it.

I phoned a few scrap places and some would only offer its value as weight of metal (i.e. £20). In the end, I was quite pleased to get £50.

Beware of some of the online scrap dealers thing. Theres one where you put in your postcode and then you get a congratulations we will pick up your car for free ! (and of course free for them too !)