I've got one for my van. I had to put 2 brake pipes on it so I bought a roll of kunifer and some unions for £7 and made some. I took it back today for the retest, no retest fee either so not as bad as some have been saying.

i dont think the free retest will last long as the only way to do a partial re test is if the vehicle fails on tyres or lighting . if you know the tester then they can pretend that the vehicle never left the test station. i took a car back today for a simple retest just a single ball joint and had to wait the full 45mins before i could get the ticket. the £50 test fee is only a matter of time now

from what i have been told
the retest fee is not in yet cause not all garages are on computer yet!

but when they are all on the system then that will change !

also some cars need a full retest and some don't,
that is set by vosa
depends on what it fails on !
so when it all get sorted out they wont do a full retest for free
nobody is going to do 45 mins work again for free !

that is what we got told
may not happen but it could
i may be wrong but they are warning all the motor trade about it

[Edited on 30/1/06 by ch1ll1]

the test centre that a lot of smaller garages use near to me have gone from 30 per day average to 14 with two testers!so most cars are dropped off at 8 am and left for the day in the hope that they will be tested that day.or if not the next day.the poor sods running the place now have to do the test and sit in as the driver so they charge full price as they cant do any repair work. i can see the rise of the super mot centre with rows of ramps and no repairs as charging at 50plus qiud an hour no need to get your hands dirty. whats annoying is how vosa allows commercial tests to be done quicker than a car. i took a 12tonne tipper for plate and set my stopwatch 27mins from behing fourth in a queue to going into the office to get the ticket

Luxury.....you mainlanders have had it too easy for too long.

Here in the colonial outpost of Norn Iron, we have had government run MOT centres from their intoduction in the 1970's. Some testers aren't too bad, but some are horrendous. The testers are mostly failed mechanics who couldn't make it in the trade, then just love to turn people down for the daftest of things.

If a headlight is 1inch too high on the beam test, fail.....you are not allowed to alter it during the test, even if it is just a simple turn of a screw. If a bulb is out, even if you tested it before leaving home, as happened to me, you're not allowed to change it, even if you have a bag of spares. My immaculate 6yr old Ducati was turned down in Belfast with a long list of niggly points....I told the examiner he was a complete prat.....rode about 20 miles to larne in about 20 minutes and got a fresh test on the spot and passed no problems.

Just imagine your local MOT test centre manned by disgruntled Civil Servants, in a seemingly constant battle with management about hours, overtime, etc, then in you wander in on a wet Monday morning with some strange car that they don't recognise and is (usually) close to the limit of interpretation of all the vehicle regulations. Its a nightmare over here....one of the reasons my brother takes all his to liverpool for their test.

The test should take roughly 1 hour (including paperwork and paying etc.)

ie 8 tests per day per MoT bay.
Any more and they are suspending licences, I suppose they think the tests are not being done properly ie too short a time for a proper inspection.

I got to admit I agree with them.
If computerising them gets the idiots with no Mot and insurance off the roads, then it has to be a good thing. It certainly makes the police's job easier.

Would you like your car hit by a spotty twat in an uninsured car that is unroadworthy?
Think of the Law abiding people who get the crap end of the stick by having accidents caused by these idiots.

You KNOW it makes sense.