Mot check online

I have a car that became mot exempt 2 yrs ago, never done it since & wont do. I have another that becomes exempt next year. Guess what, that’s not having another after then either.
I’m a mechanic, I know how it works. The government made the rules, why on earth would I want to give them an extra £30 odd quid or whatever you might pay for each car a year?
plums to that

I bought my carr before the MOT exemption came in so had a short MOT for what it was worth.
I certainly wouldn't have driven the car with some of the issues it had. Wipers were so slow they might as well not been there. A couple of the brake pipes were very poorly mounted (broken clips and cable ties) plus more than a few other things. (I bought it unseen & went by the sellers information and photos)
Would it have passed another MOT we will never know as the issues are being rectified/have been rectified.

Before it got to where I was happy to drive it the car became MOT exempt anyway.
I wont bother testing it in future for more than a few reasons.

As a single example from personal experience, some testers just don't understand some things on older cars & it can be a pain to get a older car through a test. When my usual places old tester moved on the guy who replaced him insisted that there should be less play in the front wheel bearings (taper roller bearings). I ended up making them tight to get a test then adjusting them back to how they should be after the test (before MOT exemption came in).

If I was looking for another MOT exempt car it wouldn't bother me as I would be buying on condition rather than anything else.

You could, at one end of the scale have a sound vehicle that has been laid up in the garage for a few years and just needs recommissioning or the other end of the scale the clapped rotbox with hooky MOT.

It's a useful check, you occasionally see a nice looking car at sensible money but the MOT checks shows a decade+ of encyclopaedic fails and advisories with the same items cropping up year after year which points towards total absence of maintenance. If you're selling an MOT exempt vehicle it just makes really good sense to put it through the test.

My point exactly.

I used the fact it had a MOT as a guide it should have been ok but I have seen enough cars with over the phone MOT's to know the MOT is just a piece of paper.

I have worked in enough places where MOT's were carried out to know that some have more value than others.



I wasn't bothered about the issues as I knew there would be some but just goes to show looking at a car and giving it good going over is far more important than a piece of paper.



I would have done that with my scimitar but it was too far away for me to go and see it at the time. Plus there wasn't any others about that were not total basket cases.

BTW was it your old scim that was crashed the other night (I added a photo the your old naughty corner thread)?

Don't go much on MOTs.

Example:

I was told of a guy who used to buy and sell Fiestas (going back awhile) He had a good set of wheels and tyres and a new exhaust system. These were supposedly fitted to every Fiesta he put in for an MOT. The originals were then returned to each car before it went up for sale with a new ticket. . . . .

MOTs always have, and always will be, not worth the paper they’re written on.

Various scenarios have already been covered by others, but my latest one was I bought a b3 Passat estate off a guy who had been given a huge fail list that he thought he’d never be able to afford to repair. I got the car cheap because of it, he chucked it on eBay with the fail list copied and pasted. This obviously scared off most buyers so I got it for realistically less than the wheels that came on it were worth.

I got a pass spending less than £50, almost all jobs were minor consumables, cleaning up and freeing off existing parts, and a 50p sized bit of welding. That one 50p sized bit of welding on a heat shield bracket (not the exhaust bracket as they’d listed it and failed it on for the exhaust being insecure) was listed as 5 major corrosion fails because of its particular location!
The garage that had tested it had been rather over-zealous regarding some items, particularly the advisories, my tester looked at them and said they’re a pass and he wouldn’t have even mentioned them.

Ah, the old adage. "every tester is out to get you' seems to be the message here.

TBH, any car you go to look at isn't worth the paper it's written on if you go on some of the comments above. I do know one thing though.

The retros I have seen with an MOT have generally been more kosher than those without an MOT. At my place, one car I wouldn't even trust to drive 5 miles down the road ; another chap refused on the request of the owner to drive it down to London and I can see why. When he was moaning the repairs of the brakes/suspension came to more than an engine would have cost, is that really the right mindset to own a car with?

As for the some testers don't understand old cars, I have a solution. Go to one who does! Yes, it will cost a few quid but no one's time is truly free these days. I know and have been to some arsy testers, but word-of-mouth etc. goes a very long way.

I'll admit I get a kinder MOT than most but even that works on an element of trust (i.e me getting the work done soon after or losing the privilege) and he'll always moan at me for brakes/ suspension or tyres.

And yes, I've been bitten by MOTs previously where the testers were too keen. By the same token I've been bitten and almost bitten by garages who should know better. What are you folks going to do? Drive in curse word heaps because you can't trust no one?

As an example, my dad's BMW E61 535d stunk of diesel inside and lost all power. I managed to get 80% of the shove back just by untrapping vacuum lines. When I went to a well-known specialist, he claimed the smaller turbo was going and quoted a pretty large bill (£1.3k). I then checked it myself. Despite them being adamant the manifold was fine, it had a huge crack in it ; I am surprised the manifold didn't split apart in two upon removal.

I gave the car to a garage a bloke as funny as me told me about. he confirmed my suspicions. Yes, the job was £400, and it took 3 days, but I had a diesel fume free car with the low down pull back.

If I took your folks attitudes to tests I'd have never have used the latter guy, and still would have been driving around in a gas chamber of a car. As for me doing it, anyone who knows what a twin-turbo M47 setup is like will know it's a hard job to tackle in a weekend correctly if you've not done it before; my dad uses the car every day. Even on a single turbo, it's a ballache of a job.

I could have put my Merc on the road as it was. It only had shot TREs, 20 year old tyres, seized calipers....

That’s an entirely different debate though, which has already been discussed on here at length (& many other forums)
We all have our opinions on whether it’s a good idea to make vehicles mot exempt at a given age, or not, but that’s not what the op question was really about. What he was eluding to was, why don’t people do them anyway so it gives a new potential buyer confidence & a record for them to see. Which is a totally different debate to say cars are being driven in a dangerous condition

The fact of the matter is most cars which have not clearly been driven for years are now being sold with the MOT free tag insinuating they are roadworthy, way more than before.

No matter how you look at it, it seems the the OP has a point there