My SVA is a week on Monday and I'm on holiday next week to finish everything off. I want to get the emissions, brakes and lights checked by my local friendly garage which is only a mile away, but don't have a trailer or car with a towing bracket. If I upgrade my footman James build insurance andf book it in for an MOT on the chassis number am I legal to drive it to/from the MOT station in a similar way to driving to/from the SVA?

No, the car doesn't need an MOT so you don't have a legitimate reason for driving it.

Stu

Yup. No need for MOT so no reason for driving to one.....

Not legal, but if its a mile away and noone sees you driving, whos to say you didn't trailer it there earlier?

If you do you'll end up on the MOT system and lose the 3 year grace.

I trailered mine to an MOT station and asked if they would do it without going through the Vosa system. They did and didn't charge me a penny!

Legal to drive to SVA but not to DVLA after the test. Bizarre, but true!

I'm with Footman James as well and they confirmed this is all ok with insurance against the chassis number.

Dunno if it's 100% legal because of the whole 'required' thing (as above, an MOT is not required before SVA).

However, loads of people do it without any apparent problems. I did it too, and failed my 'MOT' on emissions. I didn't get entered into any database because the garage I went to couldn't put the test on the computer without a number plate.

A spirited 50 mile blat to the SVA sorted out my emissions though - the ECU just needed to relearn it's settings.


[Edited on 8/4/09 by Madinventions]

if they are your local friendly garage see if they have a set of trade plates they could lend you you shouldn't have any problems for a 1 mile trip
cheers
colin

I have a little booklet, SVA5 'The Single Approval Scheme' and on page 16 it states,
'.. the only circumstances in which you can drive the vehicle before completing the registration and licensing formalities are to and from a pre-arranged SVA and/or MoT test and to and from a garage for remedial work following failure to pass the tests.'
So it's perfectly legal to drive to a Mot as long as it been booked and you have insurance. It doesn't matter that in theory your car doesn't need one.
I put my car through a 'dummy' MoT as I wanted to set the headlights, check the emissions and make sure the brakes were OK before driving it 75 miles to the SVA test at 6am on a dark March morning.

Geoff