Best reasons for NCT refusing to test a car

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Dangel4x4

"Smell of dog"? I'd have asked him to point that one out in the NCT manual.

I always found the "orangeness" of indicator bulbs to be a very subjective one.

It's not like they're supplied with colour swatches to check your bulb against.

Seatbelt retracting too slowly? Another subjective one...

djimi

Ive posted this before I think but I had a tester attempt to refuse to test my car because quote "we dont test cars with Clifford alarms". The genius had opened the window fully, locked the doors with the alarm and then couldnt figure out why the alarm kept going off when he stuck his arm through the window... Took me a good five minutes to get it through to him that a Clifford in valet mode operates in exactly the same way as every other car alarm on the planet!

corktina

so you heard it third hand? I don't believe it

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Dangel4x4

corktina wrote: »

so you heard it third hand? I don't believe it

It's Friday afternoon, lighten up

ardmacha

Dangel4x4 wrote: »

"Smell of dog"? I'd have asked him to point that one out in the NCT manual.

This isn't a reason to fail the car, this a reason not to test it, so should be in the "Best reasons for NCT refusing to test car" thread.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Chimaera

From page 5 of the NCT Manual (http://www.ncts.ie/NCT%20Manual%20Revise%20May%202012.pdf):

Testers may refuse a test in the following circumstances:
(i) where in their opinion any part of the vehicle or its equipment is in such a dirty or dangerous condition as
to make it unreasonably difficult to carry out the test.

So if the inside is filthy and stinking of dog, the tester can reasonably say to the owner that (s)he is not willing to test it because of this.

dgt

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

My old 406 was owned by a dog shelter, where the chap had dogs in the car. The smell was quite pungent and piercing, on a hot day it was unbearable :eek::eek::eek:

I ended up buying a new interior and setting fire to the old one. In hindsight, I should have set fire to the whole car.....

So if it's anything like that, I can understand why they refused

wonski

Could they refuse if a driver was smoking cigarettes in the car just before the test? Surely every workplace should be smoke free.

I wonder if they ever refused to do the test due to that?

RayCon

dgt wrote: »

I ended up buying a new interior and setting fire to the old one. In hindsight, I should have set fire to the whole car.....

I laughed ...

nct tester

I refused to test this car, stink of dog hair. after all, do you want an nct tester to sit into your car after testing one like this??

my3cents

My son was refused an MOT in the UK because the tester said the car was in too bad a condition to test. So my son tried the next nearest MOT testing garage and it failed on one easily fixable break related item (a rear cylinder needed replacing) and past on a retest with the work done.

Now here's the rub I went back to the original garage 6 months later with my car and the garage no longer did MOT's turns out the guy that refused to test my sons car was caught providing dodgy MOT's.

Sorry UK I know but a true story.

mgbgt1978

nct tester wrote: »

I refused to test this car, stink of dog hair. after all, do you want an nct tester to sit into your car after testing one like this??

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/587807/311564.JPG

.....and anyone who can guess the model of car gets a 'pass' from NCT Tester.:)

wonski

mgbgt1978 wrote: »

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/587807/311564.JPG

.....and anyone who can guess the model of car gets a 'pass' from NCT Tester.:)

French or italian, that is all I can make of it.

eisenberg1

mgbgt1978 wrote: »

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/587807/311564.JPG

.....and anyone who can guess the model of car gets a 'pass' from NCT Tester.:)

Fred Swanson, do you want to say the name of the car or shall I ?:D

BrensBenz

Woooops, off topic again - not reasons to refuse to test, just plain stupidity:

While I strongly support the idea of regular testing, and, in general, the NCT does a great job, the NCT is gathering criticism because of a lack of consistency from mechanic to mechanic- it's turning into a lottery! Perhaps if we post and keep posting stupid reasons for failure, NCT might recalibrate their mechanics.

I too have come across the "not yellow enough" nonsense but my prize goes to Longford NCT for the most moronic failure ever:

• Pre-NCT, I had new tyres and 4-wheel alignment done. On the drive home, I thought that the alignment wasn't perfect (I'm a fussy b@$t@rd). Back to the garage and the machine showed it was "within limits" but not spot on. Fair dues, the garage re-did the alignment without charge. And it was "beautiful!"
• Next day - NCT - failure - wheel alignment! No point discussing it with them because the report is in black and white before the result is revealed to you.
• Returned to the garage, back on the machine, checked and rechecked by two mechanics: "Mister, these wheels are so good that if we move them at all, it will spoil the alignment".
• Next day, back to NCT - passed (just). Then I revealed the test sheets from the garage; that the alignment had not been re-adjusted and suggested that either their method, calibration or training was suspect. "Ah now", and here it comes: "you must have hit a pothole since the first test (24 hours ago)and corrected the misalignment!

So, TOP TIP: If your alignment is so off that it will fail the NCT, just drive around Longford, hit a few potholes, it'll be grand.

PS: Yes I know the NCT and independent shops use different methods to check alignment but there is a financial hazard for garages to do bad work (so they calibrate their machines properly) while no financial deterrent exists for NCT when they make idiotic pronouncements.

PPS: Last NCT, I got "advice" that my rear axle bushes "will probably fail next time." Went to the garage and "while it's up on the ramp, lads, we might as well change these bushes."
"These bushes????" Can't see anything wrong with these bushes. Hey, Tony, whatcha think of these? They're bleed'n perfect!"
Looking forward to next year!

ltdslipdiff

Its either a Peugeot 206 or 306 !!

Fred Swanson

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akura

MK2 Clio... I win

Hellrazer

Ive had the "bulbs not orange enough",no county on the reg plate.

Best one last week was a lad told me he couldnt do the emissions test because he could "smell" the dipethane.
I asked was it within the failure parameters and was told it was but he still couldn't test it because he could smell dipethane and was throwing the machines readings off and it wouldn't be a correct result.

That's some nose.Maybe he should become a sniffer dog.

Never heard the likes of it in my life.I put dipethane in every single car I nct--it is an injector cleaner in all fairness and it can make that difference between a borderline fail and a pass.Never once had a tester tell me he couldn't test it because he could smell the dipethane.

Satanta

Very interesting tread. I thought the road worthiness of the car was more about the actual road worthiness instead of individual opinion. Afaik the amount of dog hair in the rear seat shouldn't be a road worthiness issue. More of an issue if the driver is highly allergic to dog hair.

Yester

I failed because there was a hole in the fabric of the drivers seat.

BrensBenz

Satanta wrote: »

Very interesting tread. I thought the road worthiness of the car was more about the actual road worthiness instead of individual opinion. Afaik the amount of dog hair in the rear seat shouldn't be a road worthiness issue. More of an issue if the driver is highly allergic to dog hair.

Ah lads! These are all perfectly legitimate reasons to fail an NCT:

• Dog hair on the rear seat would encourage nearby pedestrian dogs to chase the car, distract the driver and cause Armageddon. Worse still would be if the hairs were from a setter or gun dog - they would scare birds, suddenly reducing daylight / visibility for the driver, resulting in total carnage.
• And I'm tired reading reports of death and mayhem because a driver, following a car with a light flashing rhythmically, slowing down before a junction, decided that, because it couldn't possibly be an indicator because it's not yellow enough, ploughed into the back of the decelerating car.
• No county on the reg plate? Other drivers loose all concentration on the road while desperately searching for the county as Gaelige and, before you know it, the road is like a 1970's disaster movie.
• And as for holes in upholstery! The driver might have just visited Subway and later, found a piece of food lodged between his teeth. Rather than using his tongue to remove the crumb, he reaches into his pocket for a toothpick which slips from his fingers and into the hole in the upholstery. If he hasn't already crashed because he took one hand from the steering wheel to find the toothpick, it's only a matter of time before he drives over a bump, the toothpick stabs him in the hip pocket area and he crashes into someone turning left with an illegally pale yellow indicator.

How about a failure because of alleged headlight mis-alignment? On the dash is a switch to raise or lower the beam. There are 5 positions for this switch, i.e. 0, +1, +2, +3 and +4. The NCT tester (forcibly) moved it from the normal 2 position and found a brand new position for this switch, i.e. -0.749 and failed the car!

And just because "the NCT manual says....." doesn't make it sensible. When the manual is wrong or just plain stupid, revise the manual!

Apologies again for being off-topic but these nonsensical pronouncements need to be highlighted and action taken by NCT management to weed out the (small number of) Little Hitlers and re-introduce consistency into the tests.

Lardy

On the flip side, my Chroma passed the NCT first time recently. It had 4 dead shocks, needed 4 new ARB links and needed the O/S drive shafts replaced.

Tail Docker

NCT is a massive, dopey, pita. You go to book one and get a date somwhere out in 2022, when some tool with the common sense of a spoon will nit-pick over minutiae and demand a re-test. Must be a nightmare for dealers that need to NCT stock quickly. Posit the UK MOT version - bang it in on two hours notice, have a thousand times more sensible test with proper advisories as opposed to dozens of dopey fails. As per usual, we picked a crap system that complicates a simple test. And now we have handed the DOE test over to the RSA, guaranteeing that it too will become a PITA form filling excercise with the common sense of porridge.

slimjimmc

Tail Docker wrote: »

NCT is a massive, dopey, pita. You go to book one and get a date somwhere out in 2022, when some tool with the common sense of a spoon will nit-pick over minutiae and demand a re-test. Must be a nightmare for dealers that need to NCT stock quickly. Posit the UK MOT version - banby g it in on two hours notice, have a thousand times more sensible test with proper advisories as opposed to dozens of dopey fails. As per usual, we picked a crap system that complicates a simple test. And now we have handed the DOE test over to the RSA, guaranteeing that it too will become a PITA form filling excercise with the common sense of porridge.

The NCT availability is a mess, I don't think anyone with any sense denies that but the tests are sound. All EU vehicle tests must do the same basic set of tests with the same test criteria, there is nothing particularly onerous about the NCT, if anything the MOT is probably more probing so more chance of failure. You can read the MOT specs at http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/index.htm It is also an annual test for all cars aged 3 years and up, and at up to £57.30 (€71.68) the GB MOT can be a lot more expensive (NI cheaper).

In GB the MOT is performed by garages and historically was rife with vested interests generating failures. It has been cleaned up lot but the potential would still be higher than in independent dedicated test centres.
The NCT model including central booking and dedicated test centres has been adopted by the UK government for the MOT in NI though they have marginally more centres relative to the population, NI 17 centres/1.8 M people, Irl 47 centres/4.5 M people.
http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/how-do-i-book-an-mot-vehicle-test-appointment

Satanta

Lardy wrote: »

On the flip side, my Chroma passed the NCT first time recently. It had 4 dead shocks, needed 4 new ARB links and needed the O/S drive shafts replaced.

You make a good point. I drove my mother in laws car to get new tyres before she sent it to nct and thought it was in fairly bad shape. Could definitely detect bush or drop link issues on the front. I was that ashamed of the car I had to tell the guy at the tyre shop that it wasn't mine. I told her to send it through and we'd repair what it failed on. Passed no bother.

eisenberg1

mgbgt1978 wrote: »

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/587807/311564.JPG

.....and anyone who can guess the model of car gets a 'pass' from NCT Tester.:)

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Ok, with all that dog hair, it has to a Rover:D

PLUG71

Yester wrote: »

I failed because there was a hole in the fabric of the drivers seat.

:rolleyes: