Car MOT dilemma…

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moehat

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Took the car for its MOT today and it passed. However I was given a list of things that will need doing asap due to it being quite old and, like its owner, suffering from old age wear and tear. Will cost nearly £2,000 to fix.Car isn’t even worth that now but it’s a nice little Yaris with hardly any mileage. I just read that from 2023 garages had to tell people of any future work that needed doing, which is what has happened today. Now, I could replace it with newer car that would probably have much greater mileage on it and, if I did so that £2,000 would go a long way towards the cost of its replacement. A newer car would also be far more fuel efficient and road tax would be miniscule. Does an MOT just mean that a car is fit to drive at that moment in time or that it should be ok till the next MOT? Will these problems affect my insurance? Is what happened today purely down to the new rules? Wasn’t expecting it to be honest.
 
Im not a mechanic, but as far as I remember ( from having lots of cars in a similar condition to yours !!) it’s only good for as long as the car is roadworthy within a year - if something fell off next week then it would be considered a failure if there’s a reason to look at it? ( if that makes sense)

I’d be getting rid as soon as possible to be honest - having a full MOT is a big thing - you’d maybe get a good trade in deal for it against something newer?

Cars are a minefield. Can you have a chat to the MoT centre ( or your usual garage if it’s not the same!) and ask them what they think?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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The sad thing is that it almost looks brand new. I need to do a list of questions to ask the garage because I wasn’t thinking straight when they told me and I’ll show the list of problems to someone car savvy. If I part chop it it will go to an auction and someone will buy it because it looks so good. I’ve twice seen cars being driven around that we’ve part exchanged because they weren’t safe assuming that they would be scrapped. I only use the car for small journeys anyway; shops, gym, dog walks etc.All I need now is to find my boiler needs replacing when it has it’s annual service on Friday!
 
Just watched the video report which wasn’t as worrying as the chat I had in the showroom*.Corrosion looked awful but the engineer was quite upbeat about it: ‘nothing unexpected from a car of that age’. At least they didn’t find, as happened post lockdown, a nest left by a little creature that had been living in the engine!
*maybe they just wanted to sell me a new car.
 
The price of second hand cars since the 'lockdown' lifted have gone through the roof. A nephew who dealt in them abandoned the business as auction prices just stupid so £2000 to get yours fixed perhaps not a lot of money. My usual garage advised me for years re things needed doing in x miles but no panic now when having MOTs done. They shut down at start of Covid and more recent garage has done the same. This year they passed it although airbag light on , and has been for months and is an instant fail, but passed it albeit saying my front brakes were dangerous....please explain that to me I said? They had 'no time' to sort the light but could do the brakes - which to me the brakes were more money and I've probably been ripped off a bit, I needed it to pass so I couldn't say no.
I would recommend you some googling re 2nd hand cars for sale and get a view of the prices before deciding anything but £2000 is probably a bargain.
I and several others are hoping that Rishi's decision to push back the date for petrol cars etc will help with second hand car prices. My petrol Korean car is 14 years old and I paid £6,600 during the scrappage deal phase for it. She's been a great car, didn't start once in 14 years when the factory battery failed after 8 years which the recovery guy said must be a record. If I want to buy a new one, looking at £25000 now. Never going to happen, no way could I afford one of those and that's a 'cheap' brand new car.
 
I have also always had old cars and currently drive a 19yo Saab 93 convertible which I love dearly. I bought her just over six years ago with 43k on the clock for £2,400 and she was immaculate. She’s now on 68k. She sails through every MOT as did my last Saab with only minor things ever needing doing. However in January I had ignition problems and took her to my usual garage now run by the son as father has taken a back seat. Son is more interested in selling rather than fixing cars.

Now my car refused to start and I googled the problem convinced it was a regular Saab issue. Found a video detailing this. Garage didn’t believe it and “said” they had taken car apart and found nothing (charged me £700!). Car still had problems so it went back and then they told me I needed a new battery (another £180). I’d only had one 18 months before. By this time I was pretty damn annoyed...and told them. Then we had an Airbnb guest staying who was a diagnostic mechanic for Aston Marten. He suggested there was a battery drain and told me what order to look. A friend came over and we found a blocked drain hole at the bottom of the windscreen so water sat there and shorted the circuit behind. Cleaned it out, took out the glove box bulb.....and it has been fine ever since!

So why am I telling you this? Because I do not trust garages anymore. Find a good local individual mechanic who knows what they are doing and comes personally recommended. My mother’s car also had an issue first garage couldn’t be bothered to diagnose (they told me to get rid of both our cars and buy new...from them....!) and charged her nearly £1k without fixing it...oh but they completely stripped out the engine.....yeah right! The friend recommended a local guy who said straight away it was probably the fuel valve and he would get a new one. Anyway car went in but part didn’t arrive in time for my mother to make a long journey so he took old one out and cleaned it, drove the car for an hour to check it was OK. Then said no charge as he hadn’t really done anything. Car problem is sorted!

So take car plus list of issues to a car savvy friend or find someone like I did (I’m in Somerset if you need one!). But don’t necessarily take the first list as absolutely verbatim!
 
Positives first, your car passed its MOT & the most you should pay is £2000 (ouch!)

Now the not-so positive Jinny's "I do not trust garages anymore" is something many people will identify with, although I fully agree wth "find a good local individual mechanic who knows what they are doing and comes personally recommended"

Hopefully you will find a good one, they really are worth hanging on to.
 
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I never take my own car for an MOT.

I have used the same chap for many years to do my servicing and get him to take it for an MOT. He's actually older than me and has no intention of retiring.

This may sound sexist but I'm afraid that lots of garages will assume that women are easily conned.

Moehat these advisories are not enforceable and they are trying to scare you into spending money, if they thought the car was dangerous they would not have passed it.

Do not be tempted to change it for the sake of it, if it has been reliable over the years keep it another year.
 
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Go into Autotrader and see what they're saying is the current value of your car with its full year's MOT.

Then try Webuyanycar, Carwow, etc and see what they say.

If it looks like the £2k is worth paying then think about it, but also think about getting a second opinion. Go on your local FB pages and ask for recommendations.

At some point down the line the car wil not be worth repairing. That's the reality of owning older cars. My previous car was a 55-plate Jag which I got at three years old (a bit young to be driving, I know...) from the auction in Edinburgh for peanuts because it already had 125k miles on it. I took it up to something like 275k miles over the next four years (35k miles pa just commuting to work) but it was costing more every year to get it through its MOT so I decided I had to move on. Its final MOT showed up rust under the sills and elsewhere underneath but otherwise ok mechanically so I got it seen to independently, got the resit, which it passed with no advisories, then traded it in for more than double what WBAC were offering (plus paid £1k less for my Mazda than any other garage was selling it for).

My wife's old Jazz (57-plate) was handed down to Orchidette when it was about eight years old with 80-oddk miles on it and going well but it started to cost after that and we eventually advised her to scrap it when its next MOT showed up stuff that was going to cost a lot to fix. We/She got £475 from a dismantler.

My 61-plate Mazda tends to get through MOTs with only wear-and-tear issues these days but I'm down to 5k miles pa and Mrs O only does £2k pa in her wee 63-plate Nissan Note. We've just taken out a lease deal on a Mazda 3 to replace that and will be moving that on via the approach above. It's been valued at £4500 and £3800, which strikes us as reasonable. It's a perfectly good wee car but not in the same league as the Mazda 3, which is why we're holding on to that for now. The Mazda is being valued at around £3500 but it's the reason we're sticking with the model for the new car.

The bottom line is that cars will always cost money. If I could live without one I would but that isn't an option where I live and I'm not the type to take to living in a biggish town.
 
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Getting a decent mechanic who you can trust is essential. The big garages will generally charge absolutely top whack and don’t try too hard to repair before diving into the easy option of replacing an often expensive part. Just to make the point, my one man band garage who I used for years charged me £350 for my service, then he retired and the bigger garage in the village charged me £780 for the same service with nothing extra being found wrong. My fault, should have asked around, which I then did and now I’m back with a smaller operation (recommended by friends) and £425.
 
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Just checked. It’s 2007 and has only done 24,000 miles. The problems are
O/S/F brake pipes corroded (hoses pipes cables)
O/S/F shock absorber corroded (front suspension)
N/S/F shock absorber corroded (front suspension)
N/S/F suspension spring starting to corrode (front suspension)
O/S/F suspension spring corroded (front suspension)
O/S/R suspension spring corroded (rear suspension)
N/S/R suspension spring corroded (rear suspension)
Cosmetic report Body, Wheels, Glass
It says attention in near future: amber: follow up 7/2/24
Sounds to me that, if I don’t get it done soon’ish it’ll be like Fred Flintstones car and my legs will be sticking out through the bottom….
 
Another way to think about it is that, as 2017diary says, it's got through its MOT and is a very low mileage car so is good for now and probably at its most valuable.

You could sell it for the best price possible and use the £2k you might have spent on it to go towards something younger.
 
A couple of thoughts.

Never take your car to a dealer to get its MOT. They are a bunch of wide boys.

Therefore I'd take it to a garage to have them look specifically at the issues - if they are genuine, then get them done in bits over the next 6 months, rather than laying out £2k all at once.
 
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As Walsworth says, if it were dangerous they would not have passed it. They are advisories only. Does this garage where it’s MOT’d do repairs as well or is it sent to an MOT Centre? There’s a difference! I learnt long ago that it was better to send to the latter as there is no financial gain for them. It’s either pass or fail.

At that sort of very low mileage for a 15yo car, I’m very surprised there is much wrong in the way of corrosion unless you’ve been driving through a lot of water or storing it somewhere wet.

It could be worth going on a Toyota forum (there are literally loads of forums for every sort of car) or even try Reddit and ask advice. I am on several Saab forums and they have been very helpful. Someone on one may even know a good mechanic local to you.
 
I drive a 2009 Mazda and it's done 60,000 miles - the whole suspension went last year, wear and tear - needed a whole set of shocks.


Cars though are scary at the lower end. Yesterday I picked one up from Renfrew (I think, I got off the train at Hillerton West). It was a Vauxhall Mokka, two years old, 4k on the clock. Old guy was the seller, he's too infirm to drive nowadays. So I'm driving it south to the drop off at an Evans Halshaw in York and I kept losing the steering, it went all vague on me and I'm thinking this thing would be terrifying to drive on an A road in the morning in proper wintery conditions. This isn't the sort of thing you're gonna pick up on a test drive pottering round an industrial estate.
 
You can access the Govt website & check the MOT history of your car. I'd be surprised if there haven't been any previous years' MOT's with advisories mentioning corrosion to brake pipes. (I wish I had a £ for every MOT pass on a 10+ year old car advising "brake pipes corroded", I'd be a millionaire!)

https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history

Additionally the pass certificate mentioned corroded shock absorbers & suspension springs and by implication replacement of them. This could be a time where it could be good to have a trusted local car mechanic, as a few have mentioned, to give you a second opinion (I meant quote here).

If nothing flagged on previous MOT's the question I may want to ask the garage is - why is this the first time that there has been any mention of corrosion? Is there something which has recently happened to cause this?
 
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I’ve got all of itself previous MOT’s. I’ll read through them. I asked if it was because I hadn’t been driving it much and they said it wasn’t that. It lives on my drive and it’s been pretty damp this past year. I have to scrape moss off it every so often. What I have remembered is a conversation I had with someone at the garage a while back in which they said their mum had changed from a Yaris to an Aygo and it was nowhere near as good and they hated it so I’ve scotched that idea. They have a lot of customers like me, little old people that don’t drive much, which is why they seem to always have a supply of second hand cars with low mileage and a good service record. My partner bought a fantastic Auris from them when his car was written off by a delivery driver. Unfortunately the question I use when dealing with vets (if it was your dog what would you do; you always get a more honest answer if you ask that) didn’t work yesterday. Oh for the days when we had a welding kit in the garage and my ex kept our Morris 1,000 Traveller going for years until it sadly got a red certificate. We donated it’s parts to keep another Moggie going for a few more years; I’ve still got it’s number plate.
 
moehat said:
I’ve still got it’s number plate.
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Is the number plate a 'desirable'? Could be worth thinking about using it to finance repairs/new car?

(By desirable, I mean anything that doesn't identify the year of the original car or has only two letters or numbers on it. Eg, if I had it I'd gladly use any of my father's older car regs YGE 373, JGA 72, etc.
 
400 DOX I assume to person we gave the car to owned the rights to it, though. Never thought it would be worth anything.
 
Found last years MOT and there’s no mention of any corrosion. Went on a Toyota forum as jinny suggested but couldn’t work out how to join it; I am going to have another go, though. Might go to a local garage and ask their opinion but to be honest the reason I started using the Toyota garage was after spending a fortune at our local garage on a car that wasn’t worth it. It has changed hands since though but I don’t know them well enough to trust them with such a big job. Got to have it repaired anyway as having problems with my teeth and my savings are probably going to go on root canal fillings. I remember ruefully saying to my dentist when I had my last root canal filling/crown that my tooth was now worth more than my car so it’s a touch of deja vu.
 
moehat said:
400 DOX I assume to person we gave the car to owned the rights to it, though. Never thought it would be worth anything.
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As DO says it may be worth something but if not on a vehicle, or vehicle recorded as scrapped I think, you need to pay to keep the registration number 'alive' every year. I had a personalised number plate a few years ago, took it off when swapped cars but had to pay to keep it every year. It wasn't very exciting (!) so I let it lapse after a few years. The DVLA would send a renewal form every year similiar to tax renewal form. Would be worth checking with the DVLA/check it on line and see if still valid?
 
G-G said:
As DO says it may be worth something but if not on a vehicle, or vehicle recorded as scrapped I think, you need to pay to keep the registration number 'alive' every year. I had a personalised number plate a few years ago, took it off when swapped cars but had to pay to keep it every year. It wasn't very exciting (!) so I let it lapse after a few years. The DVLA would send a renewal form every year similiar to tax renewal form. Would be worth checking with the DVLA/check it on line and see if still valid?
Click to expand...

GG 1? :lol:
 
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