My car has an irritating spurious alarm that brings on the 'cruise control faulty' alarm every so often. There might be months trouble free and then it will alarm for a couple of days. The dealer had tried a number of times to isolate the fault, taking the car in for a couple of days and changing sensors etc. but never solved it. I heard that they took in part exchange another car with the same fault and really tried hard to solve it, even to rewiriing the looms. Eventually I made a special journey to the dealer with the fault recurring and the technician could only show that it was due to a fleeting computer impulse on starting. As soon as it had occurred it self cancelled, but the light stayed on until the ignition was switched off. It might then reoccur, and it might not. I've had the car over five years now and otherwise it is a gem.

I have just been reading the article in the Which? magazine.

The article says. "It's a visual check, so doesn't require examiners to find out why a light is on. But most garages will need to use diagnostic equipment to find out the cause of the problem before they can fix it - and this comes at a cost".

Is this going to lead to problems ?

'Until now illuminated lights for any of these systems would have been flagged as an advisory ...'

With the bulb removed, the airbag light wouldn't illuminate - hence no advisory.

We now seem to test to ensure that cars still meet their "as-new" emissions spec etc at 10 or more years old, and they are no longer safe to drive on the roads

Sorry, but that's not true at all. The emissions test (for a petrol) is simply to check for catalytic converter activity and lambda control. Any engine in reasonable condition should pass easily. The opacity test for a diesel is laughably easy.

I do take exception with the warning lights though when a feature was voluntarily fitted prior to becoming mandatory.

Surprisingly, air bags are still NOT mandatory, so it seems a bit inconsistent to fail a car for an illuminated air bag light.

Getting reports of mileages being wrongly recorded. On some models the testers are recording the trip instead of overall mileage and ignoring the .0, so a trip showing 4952.7 would be recorded as a total mileagte of 49,527, ignoring the total mileage counter, which migh only be 22,430. So before submitting a car for the MoT, always zero the trip, and zero both A and B trips if the car has them.

In some cars, including our Berlingo, the display is trip or total with a short push of the control knob to toggle between. If the tester doesn't know that.........

My TDCI Mondeo passed its MOT last week with one advisory.

"Due to fixed engine covers the tester could not check the engine bay".

I thought this was wrong as Ford built the car that way but the tester stated he is required to check the fuel and brake pipes in the engine bay for leaks and other failings, with the covers on he cannot and he is not allowed ro remove the covers, so that statement is meant to cover him for any future falings.

Going on from this, he pointed out an adjacent Mercedes, with these cars, covers are fitted from the radiator back to the rear axle, in consequence he cannot carry out essential checks underneath the car.

If what he says is true then it makes a mockery of the whole MOT test.

"If what he says is true then it makes a mockery of the whole MOT test."

Or..we want to put the price up again, so have to make the list of tested items longer somehow.

Edited by Hamsafar on 30/05/2012 at 11:48