How important are these MOT advisories?

Joe_Horner

colino wrote: »

OK JT MOTs, what words of wisdom are you trying to impart? Are you an NT or have you been busy on google?

Seemed like a genuinely useful post to me - including the point at the start that advice over the internet from people using a mixture of personal experience, hearsay, and not seeing (or even knowing) the vehicle in question is on dodgy ground.

As an example, an earlier comment that if brake disks were more than lightly scored they'd be a fail. The revised MOT criteria for brake disks (basically, worn to the point of imminent failure) is so low that you really don't want to reach it. That doesn't mean the OPs are dangerous but it equally doesn't mean that they're fine. Without seeing them there's no way to know.

I've got a lot of years experience maintaining cars, keeping them safe, and getting them through MOTs and the order I'd be looking at those advisories (in the absence of obvious symptoms) would probably be:

Lights, disks, drop-links, ball joints, steering rack, strut mounts

That's more for convenience / ease of checking than any being "worse" than others - the only exception being lights first because a scratched lens will tend to scatter light which can be annoying for other drivers and I don't like being flashed on the road

For the steering rack play, if the MOT's been done properly, bear in mind that it won't be too serious because if it was the car would have failed for play at the wheel. There's no direct fail for inner steering joints but they'll show up as play at the steering wheel, which is a fail.

The guide is no more than 13mm (1/2 inch) play at the rim of a 380mm (15 inch) wheel and proportionately less on a smaller wheel (that only makes a couple of mm difference though, so 1/2 inch is a good benchmark). It doesn't take a lot of wear in a joint to produce that and you'll certainly fail for it long before there's any risk of the joint separating!

salubrious

Joe_Horner wrote: »

For the steering rack play, if the MOT's been done properly, bear in mind that it won't be too serious because if it was the car would have failed for play at the wheel. There's no direct fail for inner steering joints but they'll show up as play at the steering wheel, which is a fail.

The guide is no more than 13mm (1/2 inch) play at the rim of a 380mm (15 inch) wheel and proportionately less on a smaller wheel (that only makes a couple of mm difference though, so 1/2 inch is a good benchmark). It doesn't take a lot of wear in a joint to produce that and you'll certainly fail for it long before there's any risk of the joint separating!

Bear in mind that the 13mm of play can quite easily become 48mm depending on the amount of joints from the steering wheel to the rack.

Add in that most of the time it is not actually possible to see just how many joints are fitted from the steering wheel to the rack due to cowlings/plastics/covers etc.

This means that benefit of doubt to the presenter is used i.e work to 48mm

Which means an awful lot of play can be at the road wheel and in an inner rack joint - I've no idea how much is in this particular car, but knowing what I have passed before now, the steering joints would be my first port of call.

=rizla=

The headlights, is it the plastic deteriorated or the reflector? as has been said if its the plastic lens then t cut, I've also heard toothpaste works well. If the reflector then if the glass/plastic comes off then I've removed the headlight, taken the glass off and painted the reflector with chrome paint before, and it worked a treat.

alex0789

Sorry for the really late reply guys,

I've been really busy and completely forgot about this post.

For all those who asked, the car is a 2003 Clio.