MOT' ing your Kit Car

[listerjp2]

Apologies now as this maybe a little long but bear with.

I have just taken my 1978 Roadster in for an MOT.

Albeit she is designated on the V5 as historic and MOT exempt, I still do it for peace of mind.

I found that she failed on emissions, I thought it was only a smoke test?

The MOT guy said if I couldn't get the emissions down I would not be able to drive the car.

I was worried as this could be the end of me driving my beloved Roadster.

After playing around with the carb and a new set of plugs, it passed. PHEW!!

When I got home I thought I would check DVSA.

In the document " In Service Exhaust Emission Standards For Road Vehicles Nineteenth Edition it states

PETROL AND GAS POWERED VEHICLES

Vehicles to be tested

In-use exhaust emissions testing is applied to all petrol and gas-powered vehicles with four or more wheels.
The test does not apply to vehicles fitted with 2-stroke engines.

The following types of vehicle will be considered as first used before 1 August 1975 (Visual Test):

• Wankel rotary engined vehicles first used before 1 August 1987.
• All kit-cars and amateur built vehicles first used before 1 August 1998.

1.1 Types of test

The emissions test to which a vehicle is subject will depend upon its date of first use (i.e. date of registration or date of manufacture if used abroad before first registration in the UK) as follows:

• For vehicles first used before 1 August 1975 a visual test will be applied.
• For vehicles first used on or after 1 August 1975 a metered test will be applied.

As you can see, Kit Cars first used before 1 August 1998 will only need a visual test.

I have showed this to my MOT tester and, although he agreed it was confusing, he would in future only give my car a visual test.

Lesson learnt.

Adrian

[928cdu]

Wow Adrian, it just shows we need to know the rules better than the people who are supposed to know the rules !

This is what concerns me about this whole voluntary MOT thing, Classic car considerations will slowly be designed out of the rules and our cars will fail by default.

Also, noted .. take car to place that regularly MOTs classics.

[listerjp2]

In the same document there is a table which states that, above idling speed,the figures are as follows:

Before 1/8/75 - there is no requirement just visual test

From 1/8/75 to 1/8/86 - Co2 must be below 4.5% vol and HC must be below 0.12% vol (1200 ppm)

The second set of figures are the ones he used and thank god after a bit of tweaking the old girl got there.

Adrian

[Patrick]

I had a similar issue with my Sportster 1988 BMW M20 engine, F age related plate a couple years ago, kit purchased 2005.

They applied the post 93 with catalyst test to it and failed it, as you'd expect.

Had to dig out the regs and the proof of age letter from BMW that I used during the SVA process to get them to re-test at the correct non-cat levels.

It turned out the tester was fairly new and hadn't learned the regs properly, they've been fine since.

I can see why they're making MOT's optional on classics as so many rules have changed, I'm still not convinced its a good idea to have the test optional.

[andyf]

They are making it optional because they can't be bothered to keep writing in these exceptions and the number of classics on the road is very small and they probably have statistics to say that they are involved in a diminishingly small number of accidents...