From School Runs to Road Trips: Ensuring Your Car Passes it’s MOT
Across Essex, Brighton and other towns in the south cars are put through their paces. Typically, in these sorts of urban locations, cars are used every day to take the kids to school because, unlike big cities, like London, there isn’t such a good public transport network. There again, people who live in the South of England will frequently use their car for much longer journeys, too, perhaps heading north on a road trip or heading to France and the rest of continental Europe on a summer holiday.
To ensure that your car is capable of delivering short runs of just a few miles while also being perfectly set up for much longer trips with sustained high speeds – whether they are on motorways or autoroutes – your vehicle must be in a condition sufficient for it to pass it’s next MOT. Carried out every year after cars pass the age of three, MOTs are easy to fail for simple things that owners could’ve put right. You could book your MOT test locally or in Brighton with KAP but before you take it in for it’s assessment find out what it might fail for and take appropriate measures to put things right, if needed.
Faulty Lights
All your car’s lights must be in good working order to pass an MOT. If the indicators don’t work, then your car is deemed to be unsafe. Check them along with the brake lights and headlamps. Just changing a bulb is all that you usually need to do to deal with a light that won’t come on, after all. Your fog lamp and reversing light must also be in good working order to get through an MOT inspection successfully.
Obscured Registration Plates
You are not driving a roadworthy car if either one of the registration plates is obscured in some way. Sometimes, people alter their license plates to make them look different, something that could invalidate your insurance let alone cause an MOT failure. More often than not, dirty or broken license plates are the problem so fix up any of yours if they are not in good condition.
Dodgy Wipers
You might not know it, but your car’s windscreen wipers are inspected during an MOT. In coastal locations across Essex and Brighton, you need to be able to deal with sea spray as well as rain, so wipers are important for visibility. If your wipers don’t work or only work intermittently then your MOT inspector may fail your car. You should also check the blades. Old ones don’t clear away water effectively which means you cannot see ahead of you. Replace ageing ones, so your car will be sure to pass its MOT without having to be booked in once more following a refit.
Poor Tyres
Tyres are among the most common reasons cited for MOT failures in the UK. Most motorists will understand that if they take their car in for it’s inspection with bald tyres, it will fail. Did you realise, however, that only one small section of tyre beneath the legal tread depth limit is enough for a tyre to be assessed as unroadworthy? Other problems with tyres are that they are under-inflated or, conversely, pumped up too much which means they won’t grip as well as they should. Buy new ones if your tyres are approaching their usable lifespan.
