Luckily I made it to the test centre in one piece, and with plenty of time to spare (I had my doubts about driving there, but she didn't miss a beat!).
Sadly a first time pass wasn't to be though
The car was tested by the main tester (Doug), his trainee, and a sort of supervisor that goes from centre to centre checking tests are done to the same standard. So it got quite a thorough looking over!
They are all good blokes, very friendly, and generally very positive about the car. The supervisor was a bit of an MX5 enthusiast so we had a good old natter on all things MX5.
First test was emissions, which passed without trouble (they were quite happy with the letter from Mazda for proof of engine age).
Next was interior/exterior projections, and a good look around the car.
They liked the fact I'd stuck lots of bits of rubber on there and couldn't find any nasty edges (unusual for Leighton Buzzard apparently!).
Next they stuck it on the ramps to check underneath. This is where it started going wrong...
They spotted one of the rear brake lines and both handbrake cables were rubbing on the chassis. They weren't last time I checked, so they must have settled/bedded-in during the drive there.
They also spotted there was a bit of play between the UJ and steering rack which they didn't like. I tried tightening it up, but there's still too much play.
The ramps came down and they checked all the lights. Head light aim was way off (and still is), but everything else was fine.
Interestingly they didn't seem to measure any heights or distances of the lights.
After that they weighed it then did the brake and speedo test.
The speedo over-read by quite a bit, but was still within IVA spec.
I'll come on to the brakes later...
Next test was exhaust noise, passed with a comfortable 95dB, followed by rear vision, which passed easily.
They liked my Furore e-marked IVA wing mirrors and the position of them saying a lot of people fail by putting them too low and getting too much rear wing in the way.
Next the trainee tester had a blat round the car park to do some more brake testing and to check self centering. Both were fine.
Finally they took a few measurements with a tape measure before disappearing into the office to enter all the figures into their spreadsheet.
Sometime later they emerged with my fail sheet...
This had the fails I knew about above, along with a fail for brake efficiency, and a fail for a big mismatch between each side on the handbrake.
Not too bad a fail really.
Not quite sure what to do about the brakes yet, but the rest should be easy enough to fix.
