Bought vehicle from used cars trader and it failed MOT 2 days later

macman

TheElite said:

macman said:

Why did you buy it with less than 2 months left on the MOT? You must have been concerned about it's condition to arrange your own MOT just 2 days after purchase. Why didn't you ask the seller to MOT it before sale?

We wanted to do an MOT for peace of mind. Wasn't concerned at all, and never thought it'll fail.

But you surely wanted 'peace of mind' before you hand over the cash? 

ElephantBoy57

TheElite said:

We wanted to do an MOT for peace of mind. Wasn't concerned at all, and never thought it'll fail.

Of course the vehicle could have had a working handbrake when it was sold, but 2 days after!

Speak to trading standards or the seller, about selling an unroadworthy vehicle.

For a £10,000 sale, surely the seller will rectify the fault.

facade

neilmcl said:

Speaking from experience the electric hand brake switch on most WAVs is progressive and requires to be held down fully for a few secs whilst the handbrake fully engages, the longer you hold it the more it engages just like a standard brake lever.

Is that a WAV thing? 

Normally you touch/lift the button (or the com-pu-tah decides it is time for the parking brake) and the little motor pulls the cables/motors the pad out until it stalls to a preset current which means in theory it is jammed on.  If the cables or parts of the mechanism seize then the motor will stop before the brakes are jammed on.

There just isn't any point in not applying a parking brake fully.

AdrianC

I'm surprised there's a wheelchair-conversion that's new enough to have an electric handbrake, yet old enough to be as cheap as £10k.

What is it?

neilmcl

facade said:

neilmcl said:

Speaking from experience the electric hand brake switch on most WAVs is progressive and requires to be held down fully for a few secs whilst the handbrake fully engages, the longer you hold it the more it engages just like a standard brake lever.

Is that a WAV thing? 

Normally you touch/lift the button (or the com-pu-tah decides it is time for the parking brake) and the little motor pulls the cables/motors the pad out until it stalls to a preset current which means in theory it is jammed on.  If the cables or parts of the mechanism seize then the motor will stop before the brakes are jammed on.

There just isn't any point in not applying a parking brake fully.

AdrianC said:

I'm surprised there's a wheelchair-conversion that's new enough to have an electric handbrake, yet old enough to be as cheap as £10k.

What is it?

Don't think of the electric handbrake as the type you'd find in modern cars with electronic parking brake systems from the factory. What we're talking here is a manual handbrake that's been adapted. Essentially the handbrake lever has been removed and a servo installed to pull the existing cable mechanism to apply the brake, operated by an on/off rocker switch fitted onto the dash. The longer you push down the switch in the on position the more tension you apply to the brake cable in the same way the higher you manually lift your handbrake lever. Of course this assumes that the OP's donor car didn't already come with a standard, manufacturer designed electronic parking brake.

neilmcl

This is the sort of thing I'm referring to, the handbrake switch being the furthest on the left. That's a VW Caddy adaption btw.

facade

neilmcl said:

Don't think of the electric handbrake as the type you'd find in modern cars with electronic parking brake systems from the factory. What we're talking here is a manual handbrake that's been adapted. Essentially the handbrake lever has been removed and a servo installed to pull the existing cable mechanism to apply the brake, operated by an on/off rocker switch fitted onto the dash. The longer you push down the switch in the on position the more tension you apply to the brake cable in the same way the higher you manually lift your handbrake lever. Of course this assumes that the OP's donor car didn't already come with a standard, manufacturer designed electronic parking brake.

Ah! thanks.

I thought it was a standard feature, like a Renault, electric parking brakes have been mainstream since the early 2000s.

So you just stall the motor yourself, and let go before it burns out. Same criteria applies though, if the cable is seized, it can't work properly, even if it is adjusted.

EdGasketTheSecond

Typical case of over-engineering something that can and should be really simple; and the basic handbrake and lever has worked fine for years without complicated electronic gubbins. I bet you can't change the brake pads either without a computer program.

neilmcl

EdGasketTheSecond said:

Typical case of over-engineering something that can and should be really simple; and the basic handbrake and lever has worked fine for years without complicated electronic gubbins. I bet you can't change the brake pads either without a computer program.

It's a disability adaption, hence there's a very good reason why the "basic handbrake and lever" system doesn't work for some people. I thought that would be obvious to most people.

neilmcl

facade said:

neilmcl said:

Don't think of the electric handbrake as the type you'd find in modern cars with electronic parking brake systems from the factory. What we're talking here is a manual handbrake that's been adapted. Essentially the handbrake lever has been removed and a servo installed to pull the existing cable mechanism to apply the brake, operated by an on/off rocker switch fitted onto the dash. The longer you push down the switch in the on position the more tension you apply to the brake cable in the same way the higher you manually lift your handbrake lever. Of course this assumes that the OP's donor car didn't already come with a standard, manufacturer designed electronic parking brake.

Ah! thanks.

I thought it was a standard feature, like a Renault, electric parking brakes have been mainstream since the early 2000s.

So you just stall the motor yourself, and let go before it burns out. Same criteria applies though, if the cable is seized, it can't work properly, even if it is adjusted.

Agree with what you're saying but this could simply be the case that the MOT mechanic not understanding how the system works and therefore not applying the brake fully. Always a good idea to take a WAV to someone who has experience of working with them.