Ritch96

I'll try to be brief,

Took car in for mot at local garage a few days ago. They did the mot test, replaced the rear discs and pads (supplied by me) and replaced the rear brake lines due to corrosion. They had the car most of the day.

After collecting the car it now has a steering wheel that sits approx 1" left hand down when driving straight. The car has never wandered and doesn't now either but the steering wheel has always been dead centre but isn't now!



I went back to the garage next available opportunity and approached the guy who did the work who seemed very defensive from the word go. Then spoke to the head guy there who is usually pleasant and was this time but one line worried me. I made no suggestions at all, just told him the symptoms and out of the blue he says "we never even road tested it." Is this not part of the mot?? why would he be so insistent of this?

Anyway, they have agreed to have a look on tuesday but i'm quite concerned about leaving it with them as i said i didn't wanna be paying to put it right and he says "we'll cross that bridge when we find out whats wrong."

I am really quite pi55ed off about this, i know if i was gonna buy a car i would be concerned with an offset wheel like this. I am not being over paranoid about all this, days later i am actually more convinced about this problem, it deffo did not do it before.

Any advice regarding tech, legal or just plain how to deal with these sods will be much appreciated. Thanks all,

sorry for "war and peace"

cheers
Ritchie.

Gary C

Sounds like they went for a spin and hit a kerb.

Check both front wheel rims for dents.

If they replaced disks and brake lines it would normally be reasonable to do a road test, the fact they deny it sounds odd.

I would suggest getting a local specialist to check out your car, they should give an honest opinion of any problems.

Do you have any vibration at ~60mph ?, if so then kerbing would be the favorite. If not, then they have prob done no damage and it prob needs the track rod ends shuffling to line up the wheel.

GC8

You might well be the first Scooby owner to leave his car at a garage without recording the mileage.....

Simon

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

Cars are not road tested for the MOT.

graham72

ive noticed having watched many mots being done, the testers do like to ram the cars onto the brake rollers quite hard and if done at an angle and sufficiently hard enough it can knock the tracking out! maybe they did something like this, (or kerbing) reset the tracking but didnt attach the gizmo that holds the steering wheel in the dead ahead position. failure to attach this gizmo will result in your steering wheel being off centre!!!
might help!

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

I'm sure you would have given the whole car the once over having become suspicious so I doubt it would have been 'kerbed' as the road wheel would have some serious damage which you'd have noticed?

If the cars driving alright apart from the steering wheel being off centre then it's either been removed and put back on off centre or the track arms have been adjusted. Neither are part of the MOT so either way it is very odd!

I'd agree with taking it to an independent specialist to check it out. I think these AA centres offer free suspension checks- just don't mention about other garage!

Sorry for too many either's & neither's

Jason

bern555

took my car for a service and checked the psi3 max mph was 73
recorded, when i checked the psi3 after the service you have guest it
104mph. hope he enjoy it..

WR1 Ant

Scoobys should be road tested for mot to test the brakes using a taply meter as the brakes cannot be tested in the rollers due to the diffs etc, Also as someone else has said you wouldent work on brakes without a road test afterwoods so when they say they diddent road test they are eather lieing or they diddent carry out the mot properly eather way they are sunk. Did they swop the tyres from front to rear? as this can sometimes alter the steering wheel slightly due to the tyres pulling in a slighly different way.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

As above - for the MOT brake test the car has to be road tested.

Doing it on the roller is incorrect procedure, can cause damage, and also completely against their training (and an MOT testers training is taught so that a 5yr old could understand it - they really do teach you how to suck eggs in them classes).

Ritch96

Thanks for replies guys,

My first suspicion was a kerbing but there is no evidence of this on the rims. There isn't any vibration noticable at all either. As i say everything seems tickety boo except for the fact that as i said the steering wheel is off centre. I would have thought any kerbing or swapping of wheels may have resulted in perhaps some drifting but that the wheel in the straight ahead would still drive straight ahead?

The guy at the garage also categorically stated that the front wheels had NOT been removed because i asked about this.

Oh how i wish i had recorded the mileage!! Never mind, lesson learnt and all that!

Well i've managed to get the afternoon off work so i'm gonna stay with the car and mechanic tomorrow and keep my beady eye on him!

The garage concerned by the way is an "independant subaru specialist" but none of the ones usually mentioned on here. I shall let you know how i get on. I am aware that coincidences do happen and ther may well be a logical explanation but i think i will need pretty concrete proof of that.

He did say that to do the rear brake lines they had to drop the rear axle frame thingy down? But he assures me that it could only have gone back on straight?

Thanks again all,
Ritchie.

Pavlo

That, I am afraid is *****. You do NOT need to drop the rear subframe to do the rear brake lines. It may NOT go back in exactly the same place as it started, and more than likely you will need to get the rear end looked at for tracking (depending on how much they dropped).

If it were my car, I would try phone an actual subaru specialist and see if they can have a look at it, but either way the tracking needs to be looked at. I dare say that if you give it back to the first garage they will just move the steering wheel round a spline or two and leave the tracking as is.

Paul

mart360

oh yes they are!!!!!

or dont you care that they will wreck your diff on a rolling brake test!!!!


Mart

sulli

Speak to Trading Standards too

graham72

partially true, 2wd cars do not get road tested for an mot but i guess 4wd do for the brake test, if they have dropped the rear suspension down then get someone to follow you down the road and see if the car is crabbing down the road!

scooby-si

yes they are if its a proper MOT they will have to do a brake test

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

Haven't seen the Mot done on the scooby, but have seen them do it on the rollers with 2wd cars and assumed that it would be no different with 4wd.

Obviously I haven't seen them do the scooby, so i dont know how they do it.

I thought there were some sort of measurements taken from the rollers and that a certain limit had to be passed. How can they do that on a road test?

It would be really subjective IMO as all your getting is some mechanic's best guess that the brakes are ok?

Braking ability on all makes of cars is different, so if you haven't driven a certain make before, how do you know they aren't what they should be?

Shark

Lets set things straight

A road test is NOT part of the MOT

However, if the station doing the test has a 2WD brake roller then the tester is required to drive the vehicle with a Tapley Meter to test the brakes.

I have never seen a 4WD brake tester so would assume that most 4WD cars are tested on the road. That said I would guess that most testers can't be arsed to get the Tapley Meter out and would skip the brake road test.

David

willy

Ok I had exactly the same issue here with my Gf`s Punto.
It went for an mot and came back with the wheel way off centre.
The car drove perfectly no vibration, the steering wheel not shaking.
They said they had not road tested it either... oh and it passed no problem too.
I then went to a pal who I use for most of my repairs.
He raised the car up on a ramp and proceeded to simulate what the mot testers had done on the test.
The front wheels are raised and the steering is moved from lock to lock. When this was done the rack was rough and slightly noisy. It did stick on one side of lock too.
the actual rack was slipping causing the steering wheel to become off centre.
The car had just passed the mot, but my pal/mechanic advised me not to drive the car as it was unsafe.
The remedy was to replace the steering rack.
This cured the problem and made the car easier to steer.(no power steering)
He did not "sell" me the rack as I went to him. I could have refitted the steering wheel straight and left it at that.
It was an unusual steering rack problem that he had not seen before.
Sorry to be a bearer of potential bad news, but the fact that your Scooby has power steering could also mask the stiffer steering etc.
Its worth getting checked out asap.
Oh and a noisy steering rack is not an Mot failure by the way.

Hope this helps

*****

Ritch96

Right then chaps this is what's occured today

Took car back to initial garage and insisted the mechanic came out with me to prove to him things were not right. Showed him how the wheel sat to the left when tracking straight ahead, he agreed things were not as should be. When i showed him how the car wildly steered right at about 60mph with the wheel straight he seemed quite alarmed and asked me to return to the garage! He immediately phoned the local (2 doors down!) wheel alignment place and asked if they could fit me in now (13:00) as opposed to when he had already booked me in!!(15:00) Explains to the guy (first name terms) that he's just to put the bill of any work onto their account.

The place has one of these fantastic laser gizmo things (i live in the sticks)and after about an hour the guy gives me this computer image printout that made no sense to me whatsoever!! He says basically that all the cambers and tracking have been realigned because they were a long way out. I asks if this could have been in anyway attributable to the work that had been done and he categorically says "no way" He then says that it has "most likely always been like that." His face dropped a mile when i said "it's funny how you never corrected it when it was in for a four wheel alignment here 18 months ago!"

So ultimately cause now my motor is right again but there has been lessons learned. I will probably try to get booked in for a full suspension check as soon as possible to ensure things are not been over compensated for by underlying problems.

All's well that ends well i suppose but still baffled as to what has occured?

Cheers again all and V. sorry for rambling on.
Ritchie

stann01

GUESS you have never watched an m.o.t being done???