Failed MOT

WorkFromHome

My Ford Fiesta T reg has failed it's MOT due to the sills. Mechanic has quoted £550 to replace them, am I being ripped off? Had them done about 3 years ago but this guy says it was a botched job. He was quite pushy and tried to get me to leave car with him saying work would take 4 days!

I paid for failed mot £53 and took my car home

Joe_Horner

Without seeing the sills it's not really possible to say whether or not that's a rip-off.

If they're quoting that for full replacement sills then it's pretty reasonable - especially if they have to make good the inner sills to have something to attach to. If it's for a few patches then it's probably OTT depending on exactly where they are and what's surrounding them.

UsernameAlreadyExists

Anything costing £550 on a T-reg fiesta doesn't seem worth it (sorry!).


That does seem like a ridiculous figure (both time and money) for some welding though. sounds like you've narrowly avoided a raping there.


I'd definitely think it's worth scouting about some other garages to find alternate quotes.

colino

That could be an OK price for stripping out inner and outer sills, making good and replacing the inner and outer sills. Would I do it? Nope, I don't think I'd even fire up the welder to plate enough of what you've got just to scrape a pass.
Go on to Autotrader and do a local search for a newer, replacement Ford for say up to £1000. You may be pleasantly surprised, and I wouldn't be sinking another penny into a 15 year old Fezza.
Gat it on Gumtree as a runner with no MOT and use that £250 to go towards your next car.

Stoke

Depends how rusted they are. It's possible sometimes to weld the ones that already there but really does depend what garage you go to and how much they're willing to work with you.

£550 on a T-Reg Fiesta though? Nah... forget that. Bang it on eBay as a MOT Fail. You'll get £200 buy another one off eBay. Bet you can get something like a 52 reg for under £800.

Bangernomics.

wildincrawley

Did you take it to an independent (council?) MOT place, or was it somehow connected with the mechanic?

atrixblue.-MFR-.

fiesta are common to fail around the anchor points for the front and rear seat belt area's.


£550 to rectify effectively makes this car a write off as the car is near that value in total.
getting other quotes, may prove difficult now as you cant drive the vehicle on the road to take it for quotes so your going to have to take very detailed photo's on your phone of the sill area's and get one based on that.


he knew this and probably thought he could have your pants down knowing you couldn't take it places and would be easier for you to let him do it there.

WorkFromHome

Yeh he knows he had me round the short and curliest but I wasn't about to be walked over. Thing is it passed with flying colours last year and I bleeding well just put new tyres in the !!!!!! at the front cost £93 argh!

I may asks my last year mechanic what he thought before I do anything rash. It runs like a trouper ..

Joe_Horner

It's certainly worth getting a second opinion - regardless of the "value of the car", if you know it's otherwise good then it may well be worth doing.

Even at the quote he gave, £500-ish for a car that you know you can trust, with 12 months MOT, isn't a bad deal. "Sell it and buy another" could easily leave you with a complete POS in that price range unless you're fairly well clued up on what you're looking at.