Mot time aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it failed. I HAS MOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

speshul91

Cars currently having its mot all lucky offerings welcomed. 

hotpot

Good luck, when I rang the garage about my MOT a few months ago I was met with a sharp intake of breath from them, your heart sinks at that point.

roundthebend

I tried to take my van for an MOT at the weekend. But the battery was flat so I jump started it from the car, which didn't work because the fuel pump wasn't pumping. So it got loaded onto a truck and delivered to the garage, where my mate found it was just a faulty electrical feed to the pump. He fixed that temporarily, but it was then too late to do the MOT so I drove home, and left his temporary fix in place which flatted my brand new battery.

And we didn't get a chance to look at fixing the dangling exhaust. It's the joys of buying a "project", but I'm assured when we're camping in Cornwall we'll be really pleased that we bought it.

speshul91

well it failed. Rather badly.
1. fuel cap not sealing
2. suspension component mounting area excessively corroded inner sill/drivers seat mounting area
3. brakes imbalanced across rear axle

gusman2x

fucking cars

stimpsonslostson

Mine's getting done next week. I don't have high hopes- I do very few miles, but the car is getting old & things are just starting to go wrong with it. 

TTony

There's a sweet spot of bangernomics - where the costs of keeping something old on the road - reliably - are easily less than the depreciation hit of buying and running something newer.

That sweet spot is a lot bigger if you're handy with a spanner, and if the car is old enough to be fixable with a spanner.

The car industry is rapidly eroding that sweet spot though as cars are less spanner-able, and the finance industry is helping with all the low cost PCP deals.

CabbageCat

TTony said:
The car industry is rapidly eroding that sweet spot though as cars are less spanner-able, and the finance industry is helping with all the low cost PCP deals.

To be fair though, cars seem to break down a lot less often nowadays which offsets the impossibility of home maintenance. For my first few cars it was always a bit of a gamble to take it out on a journey longer than ten miles. Recent cars have been comparatively angelic and it's not like I've bought much newer cars as I've got richer - I've always gone for motors about 10 years old.

crunchman

TTony said:

There's a sweet spot of bangernomics - where the costs of keeping something old on the road - reliably - are easily less than the depreciation hit of buying and running something newer.

That sweet spot is a lot bigger if you're handy with a spanner, and if the car is old enough to be fixable with a spanner.

The car industry is rapidly eroding that sweet spot though as cars are less spanner-able, and the finance industry is helping with all the low cost PCP deals.

It's a tricky one.  I've been in the position of running bangers, and now we have something more recent that we bought when it was 3 years old.  I took that in for an MOT last week and it sailed through.  We've had it two and a half years now, and all it has needed is routine servicing, some tyres, wiper blades, and maybe a light bulb.

A 3 year old car cost us around £8k.  I'm spending a lot less on maintenance, and it has better fuel economy than the older ones I used to drive so we save there as well.

The other thing is reliability.  When we had bangers we had two of them.  If one of them snapped a drive shaft (did happen) and was off the road for a week until I got a replacement and got round to replacing it, it wasn't an issue.  I now cycle to work, and we don't really need two cars so the one we do have needs to be reliable.  The tax and insurance that we save by only running one car more than pays for buying a more expensive car.  I'm also not spending every other weekend crawling under a car.  My time has to be worth something.

When driverless cars come in, and Uber gets cheaper when you don't have to pay a driver, I think a lot of people (especially those who live in cities) will give up on owning their own cars, and paying tax/insurance/maintenance on them.

TTony

CabbageCat said:

TTony said:
The car industry is rapidly eroding that sweet spot though as cars are less spanner-able, and the finance industry is helping with all the low cost PCP deals.

To be fair though, cars seem to break down a lot less often nowadays which offsets the impossibility of home maintenance. For my first few cars it was always a bit of a gamble to take it out on a journey longer than ten miles. Recent cars have been comparatively angelic and it's not like I've bought much newer cars as I've got richer - I've always gone for motors about 10 years old.

That's true in my experience too.

Build quality & reliabilty improved hugely from the 80s/90s onwards.  

It's just that now, if something fails, then you're not going to fix it with a spanner ... It's a job for a "technician" to work out which bit needs replacing.  Which increases the cost and reduces the sweet spot for the bangernomics.

Maybe that's the next business opportunity.  After the PCP deals that make running (ie not "owning") a new car every 3 years an affordable proposition for many, perhaps we need some sort of scheme whereby everyone else can run cars that are >3yrs old without the risk of incurring a massive maintenance bill when some obscure and expensive component goes bang.

Manufacturers could underwrite, based on their knowledge of expected lifespans, etc, and offer the chance of running a 3yr old Focus / A4 / etc for (eg) £150/mth with no up-front cost or maintenance cost.  Take the worry/gamble away and give them a ready market for all their old PCP deal vehicles ...

[edit]
BRB, I'm just off to Dragon's Den

crunchman

Given that the industry seems to be going down the battery powered electric route, the issues will be different in the future.  The main issue will be how long the battery lasts for.  If you buy a 5 year old car you could be on borrowed time with the battery.

slacker

My current car is 14 yrs old. I bought it 4 yrs ago for £1500 and it's cost me £100 each MOT. It's due again in July and it's starting to make funny noises. I'm starting to get concerned as I need it to last 6 months at 50 miles a day. 

I've run old cars for many years and until the last car my average purchase price was about £300. Average MOT cost for those old ones was £400. Best car was a £300 Mondeo I kept for a year and scrapped for £40 at MOT time. Worst was a £500 Corsa I had to jump start 3 times a week. I had a truck battery in the car and one at home on charge. I tried to fit it in the car but there wasnt enough room. I repaired the idle control valve so many times it wasnt funny. I scrapped it a year later. 

What has done me in is the lack of bangers after the Government gave a scrapping discount on new car sales. I just cant get a pocket change car and scrap it. It the current car has been stressful as a £1500 outlay means I cant walk away. Add no transfer of tax and it's getting expensive to run a cheap car. 

My employer does a mates rates car hire that is not a lot more than what I pay for purchase/running costs a banger. Plus fuel consumption on a 1 litre diesel stop/start car with no tax makes it viable. 

midlifecrisis

i bought an 16 yr old skoda octavia for £325 with 11 months MOT, had it now for 8 months, not spent a penny on it, so 3 months odd to go, at MOT time if its more than £200 to get it passable il scrap it and buy another cheapy, thats my plan, not interested in cars

stimpsonslostson

Mines an 03 Honda. It's just getting to the point where niggly stuff is starting to go wrong-
I can have hot or cold air... Nothing inbetween. 
The window motors are going. 
The casing of the CAT converter fell off a while ago. 
All minor & not crucial, but I'm waiting for something big to happen. 

I only keep the car as I have two small kids- it's invaluable for short trips (& the occaisional 500mile jaunt to see the inlaws). We do far less than 5000miles a year. 
If the city car club was a bit cheaper I'd consider that.  

cj73

crunchman said:

TTony said:

There's a sweet spot of bangernomics - where the costs of keeping something old on the road - reliably - are easily less than the depreciation hit of buying and running something newer.

That sweet spot is a lot bigger if you're handy with a spanner, and if the car is old enough to be fixable with a spanner.

The car industry is rapidly eroding that sweet spot though as cars are less spanner-able, and the finance industry is helping with all the low cost PCP deals.

It's a tricky one.  I've been in the position of running bangers, and now we have something more recent that we bought when it was 3 years old.  I took that in for an MOT last week and it sailed through.  We've had it two and a half years now, and all it has needed is routine servicing, some tyres, wiper blades, and maybe a light bulb.

A 3 year old car cost us around £8k.  I'm spending a lot less on maintenance, and it has better fuel economy than the older ones I used to drive so we save there as well.

The other thing is reliability.  When we had bangers we had two of them.  If one of them snapped a drive shaft (did happen) and was off the road for a week until I got a replacement and got round to replacing it, it wasn't an issue.  I now cycle to work, and we don't really need two cars so the one we do have needs to be reliable.  The tax and insurance that we save by only running one car more than pays for buying a more expensive car.  I'm also not spending every other weekend crawling under a car.  My time has to be worth something.

When driverless cars come in, and Uber gets cheaper when you don't have to pay a driver, I think a lot of people (especially those who live in cities) will give up on owning their own cars, and paying tax/insurance/maintenance on them.

and all of us in the sticks will be making uo the tax/insurance/maintenance shortfall?    Joy

axisus

Meh. I've had over 60 MOTs, most have failed. I buy beat up cars and run them into the ground. Ya fix it or ya pay someone else to fix it. When it's too dead ya scrap it.

dern

speshul91 said:

well it failed. Rather badly.
1. fuel cap not sealing
2. suspension component mounting area excessively corroded inner sill/drivers seat mounting area
3. brakes imbalanced across rear axle

On the plus side none of that failed catastrophically causing an accident before you took it in for its mot. Every cloud...

ronnyb

I used to run bangers all the time. Had a Peugeot 205 which I bought for £300 and ran for 7 years and 47k miles. It used to ship in water into the footwells and I never solved the leak. I had to do the brakes every year for the MOT, seized calipers and self adjusting back brakes that didn't self adjust. Cheap motoring though. Can't really be bothered with old cars now though and newish ones particularly small cars are so much cheaper. I bought an new 1 litre Corsa in 2001 which was £6700. 12 years later a VW Up with 3k demo miles was £7500. Not much of an increase in 12 years.   

Col_Decker

roundthebend said:

I tried to take my van for an MOT at the weekend. But the battery was flat so I jump started it from the car, which didn't work because the fuel pump wasn't pumping. So it got loaded onto a truck and delivered to the garage, where my mate found it was just a faulty electrical feed to the pump. He fixed that temporarily, but it was then too late to do the MOT so I drove home, and left his temporary fix in place which flatted my brand new battery.

And we didn't get a chance to look at fixing the dangling exhaust. It's the joys of buying a "project", but I'm assured when we're camping in Cornwall we'll be really pleased that we bought it.

What sort of camper have you got RTB?

speshul91

This ome is going to the carpark in the sky, high insurance and not much cash means cheap cars for now. 

On a happy note my boss is selling me his micra, 06 plate 75k on the clock 11 months mot for 600 quid. Delivering fast food i dont really want a big car, a 1.2 costs me a fiver a night on average at work, space for the kids sorted. 

Anyone need any mk2 punto parts give me a shout lol. 

robgilmo

I fix cars for a living, I cant be arsed to fix my own though.