Morris Minor Owners Club

Will effect the guys that modify their cars more than anyone...

"Classic car enthusiasts who modify their cars could face a £450 test, get a Q-plate and lose free road tax, it emerged this week. Popular upgrades such as carburettor or gearbox swaps could make a car eligible for a six-hour assessment ordeal."

basically, anything that involves cutting any part off cars with monocoque chassis will mean having to get a 6-8 hour test (called a BIVA test) costing you £450... and you could end up on a Q plate, and if your car is tax exempt you will lose that as well...

anyone with a weber, turbo or engine swap to a modern engine that involves cutting the bulkhead etc is at risk...

see classic car weekly for more..

DVLA are fantastic aren't they...

I can see their justification, however twisted and mean it seems. If you stick a modern engine in a Minor and cut it about from original then it could be argued that it is no longer an original historic vehicle and no longer qualifies for Historic vehicle status and free tax. It could be argued the car is a customised car and the dreadful floor pan jobs should really be inspected and have a Q plate.

Our government is very anti car and anti classic car. And very tightwad- they are trying to close every loophole.

Thank goodness all my Minors are original!

We've been here before. A minor isn't a monocoque, its 'unitary contruction'.

"Unitary construction" is just another name for monocoque,

"Monocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's exterior, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork. The word monocoque comes from the Greek for single (mono) and French for shell (coque). The technique may also be called structural skin, stressed skin, unit body, unibody, unitary construction, or Body Frame Integral (BFI).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocoque

This legislation could apply to modified Minors- best keep them original to keep Historic vehicle status and free road tax.

Since the LCVs have a chassis, which can 'stand' on it's own - you can argue they are definitely NOT monocoques. But - the Saloons and Travellers very much ARE monocoques. As Wiki says - the word means 'single shell' which undoubtedly the Saloon and Traveller are! Could argue the classic Mini is NOT a monocoque - it has two subframes - but in fact the shell really IS a monocoque too - just happens to sit on two sub-assemblies.

The LCV chassis can only stand alone at the rear, the front end needs the cab fitted as this provides the lever arm location.
Whilst not in agreement with this proposed ruling I would be more than happy to see a stricter test for modified cars and a more in depth MOT for all classic cars or cars over a certain age.

I don't agree with the legislation either!

Although, the MOT test that we have in Britian is already one of the most strict in the world, so is there the need to tighten it further?? This would just mean even more restorable classics get scrapped and we don't want that!

For a more indepth explanation on the BIVA test and other legislation go here
http://www.the-ace.org.uk/

With respect the current MOT and its application to the Minor is simply laughable. Okay, lights ,wipers ,tyres, suspension etc are all reasonable, but we all know that the major areas of rot are covered up and the testers are not allowed to check these.
This is the area I'm thinking should be improved.
After all these are cars over 40 years old, with this amount of bodging time for poor welding. We have 'condemed ' about half a dozen cars which have somehow achieved MOT status yet were absolute death traps, unsuitable for the road. We noted rot which was long standing and not just a years worth of surface rust. And cars which sagged or bowed using a jack as they were so rotten.
These examples were for std cars, some modified ones we have seen were dreadful, ill concieved and a danger to other road users and not just the owners.

have a goers at welding

i also think that al;l home restored cars should be checked by the dvlc before any mot

aupickup wrote:have a goers at welding

i also think that al;l home restored cars should be checked by the dvlc before any mot

Why?? What do the DVLC know about classic cars, except they seem happy to impede the progress of getting a car back on the road once it has been restored by refusing the original plates etc.

In my experience, most home restorers do a far better job than most MOT garages do. The real problem here is not the home amateur but the standard of MOT garage welding, where they lap weld a patch over rust. Which does not last any time at all. Educate the industry to do a proper job before educating the keen amatuer who already wants to do a proper job to keep his car good for as long as possible.

The very last thing we need are yet more regulations! The FBHVC should be doing all they can to help the home restorer instead of spending all their energy in combatting harmful EU regs.

This thread is about the BIVA test which is about modified cars DVLA, leave the original restorers alone!

Jonathon how would this legislation affect one of your conversions even though all the strength has been put back into the shell 'and some' in a properly engineered way from any necessary cutting it would only take some jobsworth with a clipboard to make things difficult

folk can build a wall but not a house

i have seen amateur attempts at welding, as i am sure many others have too
and it is not that impressive

From what I've read it's not so much that these regulations are entirely new, rather they're deciding to enforce already existing ones more stringently and add new criteria. The 'points' system has existed for a long time but I suspect is widely ignored.

I wonder how this will relate to 'tin-opening' 2dr Minor saloons to create soft-tops? I understood that this can create problems with the DVLA even at the moment but that the club are generally able to intervene. It would be sad to put the kybosh on such practices.

It does seem to me that the simplest solution with relatively minor modifications (such as the fitting of a 5-speed box requiring minor re-shaping of the transmission tunnel) is just not to tell anyone. I very much doubt your average MOT tester is going to know the difference between the original box and a 5-speed, and as long as the transmission tunnel work is done well and painted/undersealed nicely they probably won't know it's been modified either. Even more major jobs such as having to notch the front crossmember to fit a Fiat Twin-Cam would be fairly easy to disguise.

Obviously things like stuffing a V8 into a Minor will become more tricky, but conversions like this tend to be very involved anyway, so the test isn't likely to be too much of an extra encumberance. It's the cost of the test and subsequent Q-plate and loss of free road tax that's the problem.

Also I'd like to know whether the standards the car's expected to adhere to are current ones or the ones in force when it was originally manufactured. For example, I doubt very much that things like the front seat belt mounts on a 2dr Minor would pass modern regulations - would this new test require you to modify them to comply or would they be regarded as original fitment and therefore acceptable? Would you be forced to fit rear belts, despite them never being fitted when the car was new? The list goes on. You could even end up in an absurd situation where a car becomes impossible to put on the road due to one part being modified, but a completely unrelated (original) part cannot satisfy the regulations.

As for inspecting a restored car before MOT - what's the point of an MOT then, if it's not to be trusted? The problem is that without stripping a car down and closely examining every part, you're never going to know for certain that everything's fully in order. The MOT recognises this in its 'no dismantling' rule as otherwise the test would become too burdensome, time-consuming and therefore expensive.

I think the above just goes to show that the more stringent the regulations become, the more incentive there is to get around them or ignore them completely. IMO this whole exercise is a waste of time, in that I bet if you examine road accident statistics, incorrect modification of classic cars isn't going to be amongst the major causes!

aupickup wrote:folk can build a wall but not a house

i have seen amateur attempts at welding, as i am sure many others have too
and it is not that impressive

That is rather a sweeping statement! I have seen plenty of examples of "professional" welding that was terrible, plates tack welded over rust and hidden with underseal to get through the MOT. I've also seen some terrible home modified cars, which is where the BIVA test comes in. And have seen many home restored cars that were superbly done.

The best thing to do if you want to learn to weld properly and restore a car to a high standard is go on a restoration course. We have done out bit in East kent branch by holding "welding days" where experienced and skilled members of the club teach how to weld to a decent standard.[frame][/frame]

chrisd87 wrote:-snip-As for inspecting a restored car before MOT - what's the point of an MOT then, if it's not to be trusted? The problem is that without stripping a car down and closely examining every part, you're never going to know for certain that everything's fully in order. The MOT recognises this in its 'no dismantling' rule as otherwise the test would become too burdensome, time-consuming and therefore expensive.

I think the above just goes to show that the more stringent the regulations become, the more incentive there is to get around them or ignore them completely. IMO this whole exercise is a waste of time, in that I bet if you examine road accident statistics, incorrect modification of classic cars isn't going to be amongst the major causes!

I agree completely Chris- you are right- thanks for adding a bit of good common sense to the discussion! Right , I'm off back out to the garage.

Related to the ins and outs of BIVA, what I've found over the years is that if a car looks well put together, if all the easy wins like light bulbs are okay, that colours the MOT person's judgement when going round everything else. On the other hand if the interior looks like a pigsty and/or a couple of bulbs are out, then they are get a negative impression and go looking for problems.

Even in the age of computerised MOTs, the testers are still human and something that looks bodged, say loose wires and rusty patches in the engine bay, is going to draw more negative attention than something that looks well engineered and might have been put there by the factory.

We will have to agree to disagree CJ. Re welding we need to be aware that there are different levels of pro welding. MOT welding, simply to effect a repair to a corroded part to pass the MOT test. This is not restoration simply a device to pass a car in the cheapest way. Unless hoever the customer asks the Mot welder to perform a restoration weld, which will naturally take longer and cost more money. We then have general garage welding which in a way echoes the same principal of welding, lastly you have folk like us who restore cars and do not MOT patch unless specifically asked too.
In my experience a lot of DIY welding is dreadfull, but then I have seen some very good DIY welding which could easily be at home in a pro bodyshop. A good deal of the projects shown on this and other Minor based sites show just how bad this can be. Now I'm not against DIY but dread the outcome of folk being encouraged , as 'total beginners' to try and weld major structural areas, floors and the like.
The poor pro welders have no excuse for their work. And I have to agree that some Minor specialists are guilty of sub standard work, simply see Kates resto and what we found.
The BIVA test is for modified Minors and as such directly impacts on what we do.We do try and help out the insurance companies by supplying them with a full engineers report stating the std specification of the car , what and why we have modified and a full list of the cars new specification
I have stated many times over the past few years that we modifiers might be on a path which sees what we do as unacceptable, infact many EU contries would not allow us to do what we do. If this becomes law then we will just have to accept it and go back to the mainstay restoration.
I think that we need to forget politics and grudges against the powers that be and simply see the new directives for what they are. A means to secure that the classics we all drive are safe and road worthy. In my view the MOT only goes part way to ensuring this.
We need to remember that some folk do not hold the same high standards that some of us hold, and will gladly cover rust with filler or bodge up quick repairs simply to pass the MOT with a station which might not be too hot on applying the full measures of the test.

It's interesting that the decision makers assume that all new cars have damn good welds on them. When they are crashed, manufacturers don't select any car off the track, they actually build the cars themselves then crash them to get homologation. Do independent adjudicators inspect the cars before the crash against the customer versions? I'm not aware they do.

I owned a car once that creaked loudly over speed bumps from new, after twelve months of not finding the noise the garage stripped out the whole rear of the car. It turned out that a whole section of my car had missed a welding process and was twisting, creaking and could have collapsed over time.

It does seem a bit impervious Jonathon that these decision makers should question the "qualified" after market welder (such as yourself), but accept the "qualified" engineer in a mass produced factory knowing what happened with my car.

I suppose it was noy the engineer that was at fault, rather a 'freak' in the production line. As for someone questioning my ability, I'm happy to have our work tested any day.
DIY, regardless of ability /experience ( one cannot assume good quality) needs a thorough check, simply for the reasons I outlined in my previous posts. Likewise this holds for the pro bodyshop to a degree.