Be Excellent To Each Other

Perhaps having an Australian "expedition" 120-litre tank didn't help.

:-)

I'm sure both the LPG cars I had were 50 litre tanks so filling up took around the same amount of time as filling up with petrol

So, from November 18th vehicles registered before 1960 won't need to get an MOT.

Holy.

Fuck.

Will there be some road worthiness test?

Cool, I'm going to import one of these:

No. There may be a cap on the miles it can do, though (although without and MOT, no-one's going to be keeping track).


As long as it's as shiny underneath as it is on top, I'll be up for a ride

Would the onus be on insurance companies to log that?

Dunno. I'd be very surprised if they come out and check, though.

I don't get the need for the change? What problem are they solving?

Very old classic cars could fail a modern mot as the brakes etc, are not good enough I guess

But they already have exemptions in place for the things that don't matter (or didn't when they were built), and I know you were only throwing it out there as an example, but brake performance should probably be "good enough" regardless of the age of the car

First thing that popped in my head, servo assisted brakes are sharper than unassisted. Disks v hub etc...

Anyone that has tried to stop a servo assisted car, with no power takes a lot of heavy stamping

You don't need to tell me about shitty brakes, my first car was a 1967 MGB GT

I think it's a fucking terrible idea.

Yeah, because they had to pass an MOT.
Suddenly we'll get idiots pulling 55 year-old cars out of their sheds, smacking them about until they fire up and using them on the roads - perfectly legally.

I'm sure myp is a more than competent mechanic.

I am with you on this one...

What about a car which has a valid MOT but has been involved in an accident since then? If it's visibly not roadworthy then it'll be stopped by the police, surely?

Yeah, that's a terrible idea.

The MOT isn't exactly a surefire way of guaranteeing roadworthiness (you could get the car ready for MOT, and once its passed it strip off all the safety features until the following year, turning it into a rolling deathtrap if you wanted) but at least it was something.

Hmmm.... Mini's first came out in 1959. I wonder how many modifications you can get away with before it stops being a 1959 mini....

I guess so. Laws about general road-worthiness should (I hope) still apply, but at the moment the first thing five-oh will do is to tell you you've got a week to produce a valid MOT certificate or your car isn't allowed on the road. Could be they can still do that, but we'll have to see.

But a policeman won't be able to see how good the brakes are, or maybe miss the fact that the side lights vanish at the back of the car when the main beams are turned on.

Thinking on, the MOT certificate currently tells drivers of cars with no lights what times they are allowed to drive, so that might vanish, too.

A lot of people use old Land Rovers for competition because of the free tax on old vehicles. These things are ripped-up off road supercars, but as long as the VIN plate is okay (and matches the original chassis type, sorf of*) they're an old car.

* It's complicated - there are plenty of work-arounds that allow you to get a new (possibly modified) chassis, but the old one has to be seen to be destroyed, or something.

See this fucking monster?



Pre 1973, somehow.

So, potentially, I could rip it apart, put a V8 in the back with straight through side exit exhausts, add a NOS system, add some suicide doors and tint all the windows black.
Add on a full black paint job.

Awesome

Absolutely, except for the windows. You're not allowed to tint the windscreen or the front side windows unless they still let 70% of the light through.

("NOS system" is like "PIN number", by the way).

of course it is!

You are suffering from RAS syndrome.

this pre '60 thing is a horrendous idea, if nothing else because of wedding cars. A lot of them are hung together to get through MOTs and even then shouldnt be allowed on the road, without forced MOTs the guys that run them will just say "I'm not fixing that" because time off the road is money lost. I predict upset here. I've put plenty '40s and '30s cars through MOTs without issue.

I remember seeing one with failed brakes roll downhill and cream a new Honda Accord waiting at the lights a street away from my house. He's lucky that nobody was coming through the intersection. I don't think the Accord driver had time to realize what was going on, he was still processing the 30s-era horn honking desperately behind him.

Prime example is this: Rolls 20/25, had an MOT, taxdisc etc.
came in last week for a clutch (because the wedding operator literally rolled to a halt one day) and the test drive threw up a lot of possible faults. closer investigation showed the brake mechs are siezed as hell, all the rubber mounts are more or less gone and one of the wheels is very nearly falling off the hub. Now we cant give him it back because its dangerous and we (having been proffesionals who inspected it) are now liable if anything falls off.
Thats with an MOT, imagine what these guys will try and get away with now

EDIT: thats not the actual one but its very like it.

On the flip side, it's worth mentioning that they've done this in Europe for a while, and there's tractors (even those massive twenty-five tonne, 50mph behemoths you get nowadays) have never needed an MOT.

http://www.the-ace.org.uk/mot-for-pre-1960-vehicles-to-be-scrapped/
this covers some stuff.


He sounds naive.

Just took my MX5 out in the wet.

Jesus, it must be on ditchfinders or something, it let go around pretty much every corner. Proper frightening, I'm sure they're not supposed to be like that!

I think he's probably right for the most part. Dropping the MOT will change that, though.

Scooby may need a new clutch, one of my mates was following me the other day and said there was a nasty burning smell coming from my car, very much a brake/clutch type burning smell. (To the extent he had to turn on his recirculation on the aircon.)

It has done 50K and it is very near the top of its travel before it bites, to the point that it's a bit 'on or off' really.

Clutches for these things are not fucking cheap.

I'm taking it to the garage on Monday, apparently the mechanics there have some way of telling if it's nearly finished or not.

Thing is though, it doesn't slip at all and still pulls properly, so I dunno....

And, at the other end of the spectrum, I'm trying to find two wheels with tyres on them on ebay to replace the ones at the front of the 306. The tracking is fucked again, and they've worn the outsides. Quite a lot. Looks like an intermediate race tyre. I'm budgeting £30.

Handbrake on, third gear, rev the balls off it, drop the clutch, see if it stalls or not.

I sort of did that on the way home yesterday, floored it in fourth going up a slight hill at 40mph, it didn't slip at all.

There was a bit of a burning smell in the car afterwards though.

That doesn't sound too good, does it?

Might have a fair few miles left, though.

I suppose it's just at that sort of age/mileage where it needs some cash dropping on it, it's topped 50K now and it's 6 1/2 years old.

I've put nearly 19K on it and apart from wear and tear/routine maintenance, nothing has gone wrong with it, which isn't bad for such a mental performance car.

I'm really quite fond of it, so overall I'm minded to spend the money it needs and keep it until it blows up.

Clio went in for a full service before Mrs T starts to use it for work.

£400 later, she emerges in fine health! Bloody track rod ends...

Renault FeEx.

I've just managed to put a massive dent in my car door and the bit underneath it.... Annoying. It looks costly!

It's a company car though so hopefully they'll go easy on me.

I've just fitted a track rod and sealed all the tyres on the mrs's's golf and adjusted the brakes so it feels all round a happier car. Got home expecting dinner and praise but it turns out she needed the car tonight and I forgot. cold curry hurrah!

If the clutch isn't buggered get them to check the rear pads. I know on my car the rear callipers used to get stuck sometimes due to lack of use. You may find they need sorting out.

That wouldn't cause the clutch to slip, and if AEs mate is confusing "clutch slip" smell with "brakes on fire" smell he needs a good slap.

Anyway, surely the callipers can only seize if it's left sitting out for a good amount of time?

So:

Old Man Afterthought bought a T25 camper van. It was LPG converted and stuff. The electrical system was a bit of a mess and went mad. Time passes and it still isn't fixed. So he buys a newer one which is pretty cool as MrsA and I have used it for a few nights. The T25 sits on the drive as these problems are sorted and as time passes they eventually are. Mummy Afterthought is pretty pissed off with the C reg VW sitting on the drive by this time and presses to get it sold. So it goes in for an MOT, and fails. More money later and it fails again, and then it passes. She's happy, and Old Man Afterthought is happy as they can sell it. They spend the morning cleaning the interior and exterior. Mummy Afterthought is over the moon, as is Old Man Afterthought, after replacing the covers, goes upstairs to type out the photo for eBay.

Mummy Afterthought goes to move the Fiesta in the drive away from the camper van. Somehow, the car doesn't go backwards, but forwards. Into the rear of the T25. The T25 that has been parked with the brakes off to prevent binding. The Fiesta hits the van with enough force to shunt the T25 backwards. Backwards into the garage wall. The garage wall moves many inches backwards. Mummy Afterthought jumps out of the car, leaving the engine running. Old Man Afterthought comes running down the stairs and trips the remote to open the garage door. Which only goes half way up. And stops as the runners are buckled. He gets into the Fiesta and tries to reverse it away from the problem, but he can't. As the front wheels are off the ground, due to the Fiesta being impaled on the tow bar of the T25.

I call about 15 minutes after this happens. I was told the tale, by a sobbing Mummy Afterthought. My reaction?
.

The call was cut short as the RAC were coming to remove the Fiesta from the T25 and the T25 from the garage.

So, yeah, brakes binding are the least of one's worries.

Old Man Afterthought's comment was "I think she's secretly sad it might go".

Apparently sometimes the back callipers can get stuck due to not being used as much as the front. Obviously he uses his hand brake alot, which is what uses them more than anything.

Dunno man, just throwing a suggestion out there. My back callipers used to get a bit sticky as they're just not used like the front (mind you I didn't need my "parking brake" as I had an auto trans).

The smell could be loads of things. Power steering fluid leaking onto the engine and burning etc.