Disc Brakes

Not always. A friend bought a Fiesta, with 41,000 miles showing, from a main dealer last year. She agreed the price (to include a new MoT), paid a deposit and arranged to collect it a few days later. Arrived to find collection delayed an hour because when doing the MoT they decided the front discs needed replacing - which they did without any question of additional charge so for a clear loss compared with letting her drive it away as was.

IMO, yes. AUDI dealers seem very fond of it.

Funny you should say that - although there are other cases where they say nothing about work being needed.

e.g. I always use an independent MOT tester who does test only, no repairs, one shock absorber which has been an MOT advisory for "misting" for the past 4 years, and he thinks it will be a fail next time around, but the garage has never mentioned it at all, so when I pointed this out to them, it suddenly became "required" work.

A few days before the cars main warranty ended, the MOT tester pointed out transmission fluid was leaking from the rear diff, it had just been serviced by the dealer and they hadn't mentioned it, when I pointed this out to them, they needed the car back for 3 days while they replaced the seals and shafts and invoiced £1200 to Audi UK.

Have you owned a modern car with vented discs?

three years ago I took my wagon r for a full price mot to a tyre place and it passed ...two years ago I got an invitation from them for a ?20 mot ...i took it in and they failed it on pads and discs....cost quoted ?150....Got the wife to do it for ?30 parts...took it back and they failed it for poor efficiency and pulling which was a load of s**te I figured they were in the huff for not getting the job.....I took it to a full price place without touching anything ...it passed....if you don't believe me look up mot history for SDO7 KNN ......ALWAYS pay the full price for an MOT or you WILL get ripped off .......

thats funny my '92 mustang passed year after year with an obviously warped near side front disc .......and my old merc 190e was the same....

also have you noticed that over the years advisories come and go on subsequent mots to the same car.....one year it can be front nearside brake pipe slightly corroded then it disappears ......happens with loads of slight faults....buggers up your private sale second hand price though...advisories should be banned .....

I used to service a police driving instructors car. His brakes were like new at 40,000 miles.

even then you often will. I'm picky about where I take cars for MOTs.

NT

Local Councils often have MOT testing stations for their own vehicles and apparently by law they're also obliged to offer the service to the public.

Whether they're obliged to publicise the fact or their location is maybe another matter. The testers themselves seem glad of the work however.

There's a list somewhere on the Moneysavingexpert website

I was charged around ?55 for a small van.

Saying that, a lot will probably depend on whether you think the thing is going to pass first time or not.

michael adams

...

And never go to Halfords.

Glad I never had to drive behind him in traffic. But then he probably never did drive in heavy traffic.

I'll bet he was a poor instructor. Given the very short life of brakes on police cars.

It used to be the case that it was up to the testing centre whether they operated a booking system, or allowed drive-ins. Quite a few dealer-run MOT centres were booking-(a fortnight ahead)-only.

I have always had a suspicion about testing centres that are allowed to carry out repairs on vehicles they have failed ...

He used gears - "always be in the right gear to accelerate away again"

Operational cars have a different lifestyle.

One of the courses he taught was royal protection - the idea is the passengers don't know they are in a car - it should accelerate and decelerate imperceptibly. They used a *very* shallow dish on the bonnet with a ball bearing in it (and a copper alongside it to pick it up :) )

Some will. My MOT advisory said pads were close to limit but the service guy said they were not and didn't need doing.

discs wear more than they did before asbestos was removed from the pads. The pads are harder and need servos to work these days.

As the saying goes, a worn gearbox and clutch are much more expensive to replace than a set of pads. And changing gear purely to slow the car does cause unnecessary wear on the box and clutch. And uses more fuel and causes more pollution.

Yes. They drive under real road conditions.

As I said, glad he doesn't drive in London.

As the pads wear the disc, you tend to get a lip on the edge of the disc which is outside the area rubbed by the pads. My local garage removes the discs and skims off that lip, as part of the normal car service every 12,000 miles. I'm not sure when I last had new discs, but I'm sure I've had at least one set of replacement discs (maybe front only) in the 160,000 that the car has done so far.

The biggest problem is if the pads wear down to the rivets that fasten them to the backing plates, because the rivets can there score the discs, which when new discs are usually necessary even if the old discs still have plenty of thickness. I've only had that happen once on a car: I was going down a long steep hill and suddenly there was a grinding noise. I wasn't aware of any loss of braking force, presumably because the other brakes took more braking force if the worn one stopped braking as effectively.

Luckily my garage could fit me in quickly to replace the discs and pads, but it was a noisy journey home and to the garage - noisy whenever I braked. It must have been a back brake because I could also reproduce the grinding noise by applying handbrake only (which I did as a test).

Every time I have my car serviced they warn me that new pads and/or discs will be required, but (almost) every time I get the car back an they say "worn, will need replacing next time" so they haven't worn down yet. I don't know whether pads have a non-destructive wear-indicator which shows when it is time to replace them without (at that amount of wear) scoring the discs.

I've used the local Halfords for several years for about half price. Don't think I've ever had a fail - a few advisories, and I let them fix a leaking water pump they'd diagnosed once.

I was taught when I learned in the very early 80s to change down through my gears when coming to rest, because that is what the normal test required at that time. My instructor had been a Police Class 1 instructor before he retired and said "once you've passed your test, I'll teach you the *proper* way to slow down" though unfortunately I never took him up on the extra "now you've passed" lessons.

But when I was preparing for my IAM advanced test about 10 years later, I was taught the "Roadcraft" way: as you approach the junction etc, stay in whatever gear you are in, braking progressively (gently at high speed, gradually increasing brake pressure as you slow down, then come almost off the footbrake as you are about to stop to prevent a sudden lurch). Change into the required gear once you know from the road conditions what that gear is - if you can see that you can continue without having to stop, you may need a sixth-to-second change; if you will have to stop, it's sixth-to-first, so you are in the correct gear to accelerate away again.

When I'm driving I try to lose speed in the first instance simply by lifting off the power and letting the car slow down by friction and air resistance. If there's a car behind me, I may press the pedal just enough to put the lights on. If that doesn't slow me down enough, only then will I brake using the footbrake. But I'm not one of these people (and I've ridden with them as a passenger) who believes that your foot should always be on either the accelerator or the brake, and that it must never be on neither pedal.

The IAM also taught me how (in a car without ABS) to brake in an emergency: smoothly but quickly apply large pressure on the pedal (but don't stamp on the pedal - even in an emergency *try* to phase in the braking over a fraction of a second) and be ready to come off the brake as soon as you detect any skidding. Ideally (and I reckon you have to be super-human to be able to do this) keep braking to just before skid-point and then back off to let the tyres bite - rinse and repeat. But when I tried this "cadence braking" on a skid pan, I couldn't master it: the instinct in an emergency is to press the pedal hard and leave it there - schooling yourself to release the brake pedal slightly while you are rapidly approaching the hazard is what needs superhuman skills :-)

ABS does the cadence braking for you (that's what the rapid pulsing is in the pedal). I've only had to use it in anger once: when a child ran out into the road and I instinctively hit the brake and steered hard right, managing to steer left again before hitting the opposite kerb. The child's mother gave me an earful until the driver of the car behind me pointed out that I had been driving at 20 in a 30 limit because I'd judged that there might be a hazard, and that I'd started to brake when the football rolled out from behind the gatepost a couple of seconds before the child had even appeared, and I'd managed to avoid the child who was on the pavement at the time I came to rest by the opposite kerb. I think her anger might have been influenced by the fact that the car two behind me had collided with the one behind me because *he* was driving too close.