September 2019

BY Gareth Banks CAE AMIMI I have been a MOT tester for a number of years, testing up to eight cars a day, day-in day- out. It feels like a life sentence sometimes, where nothing changes. With this in mind, the MOT Annual Training requirement could not be more useful for me. It reminds me to learn. It does not matter if you’re old-skool and have held your MOT license for the last 30 years, or have just held it for the last three years, we’re all in the same boat now, or should I say the same car? Whichever it is, if you can’t be bothered to do your MOT Annual Training before the 31 March deadline each year, you will be suspended from testing, and you could lose your role and possibly even your job depending on how much your garage relies on you. The DVSA giveth...and the DVSA taketh away. Remember that. MOT or Mr Robot The message is quite simple. Don’t be complacent. Don’t be a robot. Want to learn. Love to learn! Be proud of learning something new every day. An old friend of mine always used to say to me “every day is an education, sunshine.” I owe a lot to him actually as he also helped me pass my MOT testing practical assessment. I do my four hours of CPD every year now, just like every tester in the land. On top of that, I signed up as an IMI member which has its own CPD. This entails no less than 90 credits over a three-year period to stay a member and to stay on the Professional Register. I love the fact I’m getting forced into so much learning. It’s improving me as a technician and as a MOT tester. I love to learn and improve on my knowledge bank. Road legal We all get complacent sometimes though. A couple of months ago I had to snap out of my own robot ways. This time, I won’t use Bob or indeed Fred as surrogates, as it wasn’t hypothetical. While we are on the subject, I would like to reassure the readers of Aftermarket that our fictional thicket hero Fred from the July/August issue didn’t die as a result of working on that hybrid, although it was a close call. Picture smoking eyebrows, a shocked expression and hair standing on end and you’ll be in the ballpark. Moving on. Anyway back to a few months ago in the real world: A customer rang up and asked if we in our class 4 testing station could MOT a quad that he believed to be a class 3. I did a little bit of research and proceeded to tell said customer that his l7-registered quadracycle was indeed a class 4 test. The quad was definitely a learning curve for me. It was the first one I had ever tested. It turns out that as long as you can get the little beast up to your headlamp beam setter and have a means of jacking it up and testing the brakes then you’re good to go. They are of course exempt from emissions testing. Surprisingly, a road legal quad doesn’t need a rear fog lamp, but does need a front registration plate. Honestly, who knew? Then we hit our snag. The customer swore he’d never seen another road legal quad with a front plate on. He then proceeded to ask me where he could fit it on his lovely new all- terrain vehicle. As you could imagine a thought popped into my head about where it could go, but I went with: “Well if it was mine sir, I would mount it where they all go, on the bull bars." The customer paid for the VT30 and left, never to be seen again, but why? Was it because I failed the quad or simply because it’s taking three months to make a number plate up? I don’t know but either way I don’t regret testing the quad. Yes, it was a learning curve, but I like that, and I would actually welcome another into our testing station. I could write all day and night about MOT testing, at the end of the day it’s my job to know a lot about cars. I don’t know half as much as I’d like to, but I’m working on it. 20 AFTERMARKET SEPTEMBER 2019 TECHNICAL www.aftermarketonline.net QUADROPHENIA Is MOT Annual Training and CPD in general driving you mad? An unusual test showed Gareth Banks says you need to stay with the programme