Morris Minor Owners Club

Delighted today that the Mog sailed through its MOT.
Had an interesting discussion with the Mechanic, who is an old car fiend, vis a vis no MOT,s for the under 1960 owners.
His insurance company are muttering about an engineers report in place of the MOT for his old Triumph, which purportedly will cost more.
It remains to be seen I suppose how insurers react to this?

It's simple just present your car for MoT. Just because a change in the law says pre 1960 cars are MoT exempt from November 18 2012 doesn't mean you can't have an MoT. If you present a vehicle to an MoT testing centre they can't refuse to test it. I know some of you will be looking at from a cost point of veiw, which i can understand as the majority of us keep our cars to high standard anyway. But if you want an MoT go and get one, there is nothing stopping you.

I concur with the above because people like me that are after a traveller to go with my tourer will not buy a pre 1960 car without an mot i'd much rather wait for a post 1960 model with an mot to buy than risk buying one that has possible safety issues not tackled by the owner no matter how well he/she looks after it ,how many people do you know own a rolling road or a car lift to properly inspect their cars!

I have a 1957 lambretta ld and I will always get a MOT,It's too silly not to, I just think of it as at least a safety check once a year

Good plan, it's all to easy to compensate for small faults when you are driving a vehicle, well worth getting someone knowledgeable and a bit critical to check it.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a four-post lift at home there's always some stuff that is easy to miss.
Think I'd go for the M.O.T option on a pre-'60, just for peace of mind, although I wish I could trade-in the worry factor you get whilst waiting for the tester's pronouncement!

wilfred wrote:Unless you are lucky enough to have a four-post lift at home there's always some stuff that is easy to miss.
Think I'd go for the M.O.T option on a pre-'60, just for peace of mind, although I wish I could trade-in the worry factor you get whilst waiting for the tester's pronouncement!

Surely you wouldn't get 'the worry factor' any more if it doesn't need an MoT, it can't fail! The only thing to worry about is the tester finding something, and you just have to fix it! No retest required unless you want him to confirm that your repair is satisfactory.

I'm just wondering how MoT stations like ours will document any volantary Mot's for pre 1960 vehicles.
At the moment the presented vehicle is pre checked before being logged onto the VTS Device (VOSA's direct computer) To log it on the vehicles identity is inputed and when a match of the Reg Number, make, model & vin number is found we then seearch for VSI (vehicle specific information) although older vehicle records don't list it.
The vts device then prints this VSI info on a sheet called a VT40 this sheet is taken onto the test bay to refer to.
At the end of test the results are entered and either a pass or fail is issued. If it's a pass then on the pass paperwork is the expiry date, but it wont really have one as car is exempt.

Also testing stations are colour banded Red, Green & Amber loads of stuff is taken into account to get this banding like site maintenance parking documentation and key handover systems etc etc, Part of this calculation is average age of vehicles tested. ours at the moment is in green and average age of tested cars is about 8 years old. Last year I tested 2 triumph heralds both about 1962 ish those 2 dropped our average way down for a few months.

I'm going to start asking a few questions to our VOSA rep (VI) when I see him, I'll let you know what I find out but don't hold your breath!

So the more old cars you test your rating comes down? What do the red, amber and green ratings mean?

Its a system VOSA use for everything to asess risk/service etc.
EG Our fleet of minibusses operate under a VOSA operators licence VOSA use the same system for that. Every operator (same thing with VTS stations) is allocated a colour red being the "worse" green being the "best" when a bus and a VOSA vehicle pass an onboard camera catches the reg No, it checks with the central computer and that particular operator's colour band pops up along with all the other info. (you know when you last went to the toilet, how old your pet dog is etc) the vehicle inspector then decides wether a "pull" is going to be fruitfull. Operators in green have a history of exellent repute and those in red have a history of tachograph and vehicle maintenance infringements. EG if youve lost a wheel due to wheel nuts you'll probably go red very quickly. It's also the same for HGV operators licence.

PS in case your wondering I think were in green for the busses. Reason for the I think is we have always been green but we became a LTD company last year IIRC a new operator goes white untill VOSA have done spot inspection, or it may just go green based on past records, should't be a problem as I'm a bit keen on our stuff far higher than MoT standard which is a minimum one20% we operate at about 80%

JOWETTJAVELIN wrote:So the more old cars you test your rating comes down?

The banding is a calculation of lots of items, each item is worth points 1 being best 5 being worst so we aim for a low score on the site totals, when VOSA add the points thats what give us the colour banding. I don't know the exact figures or maths but on the line of say 100 points gets a red 45 to 99 gets amber and so on.
the average age of presented vehicles is a point system believe it or not the older the average the more points awarded. Another points area is the amount we discount off the recomended test fee we currently are £40 so we got a mid score in that section
Thats the end of boring you for tonite!

Hehe... not boring at all, thanks for explaining. Never knew there was so much legislation... sounds a bit like big bro to me but he's everywhere these days.

what a poor system of scoring e.g. if you get a good reputation amongst local people,who happen to have lots of classic cars and lots of modern cars which they sell before they need an MOT ,AND they bring all the old ones to you ,where is the incentive for you to accept the old ones for MOT ,apart from the pretty cheap mot ,which will bring your ratings down
another example of targets being used in places where it is extremely difficult to match targets to good practice.

Interesting to have it explained. My local MOT tester commented that their average age of cars was around 18yrs, but they had had two 1930s Railtons, a Porsche 356, a Model A Ford and a 190something De Dion Bouton in for test within a fortnight...
Apparently it was likely to flag up unusual activity and result in VOSA asking questions, but they just have a good reputation for being fair with older cars.

chrisryder wrote:

wilfred wrote:Unless you are lucky enough to have a four-post lift at home there's always some stuff that is easy to miss.
Think I'd go for the M.O.T option on a pre-'60, just for peace of mind, although I wish I could trade-in the worry factor you get whilst waiting for the tester's pronouncement!

Surely you wouldn't get 'the worry factor' any more if it doesn't need an MoT, it can't fail! The only thing to worry about is the tester finding something, and you just have to fix it! No retest required unless you want him to confirm that your repair is satisfactory.

I made my point badly. By "worry factor" I was meaning mot's in general, not the pre-60 question.
This comes from only ever having one car and it needing to be repaired a.s.a.p.

lambrettalad wrote:what a poor system of scoring e.g. if you get a good reputation amongst local people,who happen to have lots of classic cars and lots of modern cars which they sell before they need an MOT ,AND they bring all the old ones to you ,where is the incentive for you to accept the old ones for MOT ,apart from the pretty cheap mot ,which will bring your ratings down
another example of targets being used in places where it is extremely difficult to match targets to good practice.

That was part of my concerns as a VTS CANNOT refuse to test a presented vehicle. So at the moment if you bring me a 1905 whatever I can't refuse to test it even if I don't like you!
There are grounds to refuse though. Like if we ask for the test fee upfront and you won't pay upfront then we can refuse to test. We do a pre cxheck first so if oil is low or we suspect your cambelt (1905 models exepted lol..) is not up to date, any doors or boot/tailgate won't open from the outside, no fuel cap key available if locked & to dirty or dangerouse IE insecure load are all reasons to refuse.

I had my pickup Mot`d last week(passed,no advisories )and the chap who did it asked me if my car needed an Mot next year,and sounded dissapointed when I said yes.I have been taking it to the same garage for years now and I suspect they might refuse next year,as happened a few years back at another garage which refused to test the Austin seven that I had at the time,because it`s too much bother!

Rasputin wrote:I had my pickup Mot`d last week(passed,no advisories )and the chap who did it asked me if my car needed an Mot next year,and sounded dissapointed when I said yes.I have been taking it to the same garage for years now and I suspect they might refuse next year,as happened a few years back at another garage which refused to test the Austin seven that I had at the time,because it`s too much bother!

Contact VOSA if VTS refuses to test cos they can't (under present rules)
If a tester refuses to test you can ask him for it in writing, he should then register the vehicle for test and then issue a VT30 stating the reason for refusal.

Have a look here: http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/m4i00000402.htm

Too much bother isn't a valid reason for refusal!!!!