June 2019

BY Hannah Gordon T he one thing you can guarantee in life is that you will have to wait nervously for your car to go through its MOT, unless you are lucky enough to get a new car every three years. I am not a qualified MOT tester but I know what I am looking for on a check-over. After I have checked my car over with a fine-tooth comb, there is always that nail-biting wait to see if it has passed. The Driving and Vehicles Standards Agency (DVSA) recently released figures that went through the main causes of cars failing their MOTs. In 2017 alone, 7.3 million cars failed their MOT. Going through the top 10 there certainly aren’t major faults with the cars. What is there looks more like the result of poor maintenance by the owner. From the top 10 reasons to refuse a MOT certificate, four were to do with bulbs or headlight aim, two were to do with defective wipers and there was also a common reason of no washer fluid present and insufficient tyre tread depth. The only reasons in the top 10 that customers wouldn’t really be able to identify would be poor brake performance and a broken coil spring. Simple maintenance As much as I don’t want to do myself out of a job, it’s shocking how many people don’t do simple maintenance checks on their cars. Blown bulbs are a big one. When I tell a customer that their bulb is gone they often had no idea, even if it was a dipped beam headlight bulb. With modern cars there is now often a message that pops up to alert the driver to a blown bulb, which should help people realise. With modern car technology progressing at rampant speed I think people are unsure as to whether they can lift the bonnet up, unsure as to where the washer fluid goes or how they change a bulb with all that plastic covering the engine bay. Maybe as a nation we have got lazy with simple and basic checks of our vehicles. Instead we are relying on a yearly test to check that the car we are transporting family and friends in is going to remain road legal in that time. This is a dangerous approach. Reminder It is obviously great to tie in a service and MOT together and does make sense as the ownernormally only has to be without the car for a day. I aim to keep both six months apart. I inform customers when the MOT is due with a gentle reminder then get a service booked in six months down the line to make sure that the car is still roadworthy and free from trouble. It is so important a yearly schedule is kept to MOT cars. On the other hand, in May 2018 the government brought in the rule that cars over 40 years old don’t require an MOT. The less I say about that the better… 20 AFTERMARKET JUNE 2019 TECHNICAL www.aftermarketonline.net MOT-IVATING BASIC CHECKS Hannah Gordon believes many motorists are increasingly alienated from their own cars, and that this is putting them at risk Hannah Gordon is one of the UK’s leading female mechanics For more on the MOT turn to page 8.