Stupid laws. Rant warning.

[Ian M]

A HA! Had a chat with my mechanic today. (he was closed tuesday, I was out of town yesterday!) what ever.
I told of the Fog light issue and without batting an eyelid he replied..... Do you have a tow bar (trailer hitch to our 'Merican members).
Not sure if it is the same elsewhere, (probably is within the barbwires of the EU). It is illegal to have the cars rear fog lights on while towing. so there is a micro switch in the trailer socket. It gets stuck sometimes, try cleaning it.
A good squirt of WD40 and a few well placed taps with a rubber handled screwdriver and BINGO! the fog light works again!

So if anyone else suffers the same at some point and you have a trailer plug fitted, it might be worth trying there first. lol.
Thank you all for the suggestions.
Picked up new discs, pads and mounting kit yesterday. Good to have a family member that works for a large car spares shop. £50 for the lot. Just got to fit them now.
The discs I remove WILL be getting cleaned and saved for next time.

[Ian M]

Episode II
took the car to the garage this morning to get the discs changed.
"Ready in about two hours" he told me.
Four Hours later I call him. "how goes?" I asked.
A pause...

"Well the discs are changed, new pads and the the wheels are back on. I took it out of the workshop to make sure the brakes work and they did"
This sounded odd. "Did"?
He continued: "Yes, then the pedal went right to the floor and no brakes".
Turned out that the main brake pipe to the rear axel had corroded through. His hard braking had finally finished it off.

After the initial shock that the MOT test had 100% missed the fault, then the irritation of not having the car until Monday or Tuesday earliest was replaced by the thought of what could have happened if I was out driving and had had to make a hard stop....

Still Pithed off about the extra £250 that its going to cost me though...

watch this space.

[Jim R]

Well Ian despite the extra cost I'll bet you're thankful that the corroded pipe didn't go when you needed to brake suddenly. Shows the MOT is only as good as the mechanic doing the test though.

[langy71]

Quick Hi-jack...

Many many years ago,
A certain high street garage/MOT tester ..(rhymes with sh&t-fit..lol), whilst MOT-ing my Vectra Sri, tried to tell me that it had failed due to the exhaust sitting 'proud' of the bottom lip on the rear spoiler.. when I asked him to describe what he meant he replied that because the exhaust tips were visible under the rear spoiler the law was that they were an instant failure, (due to something to do with them apparently being an aftermarket illegal system), at the time I didn't know any difference and needing the car to drive to family in Kent that afternoon, I told him to change the rear box which upon his advice would put place the 'tips' back under the end of said spoiler and be perfectly legal....

A couple of hundred quid later, the job was sorted.....and off I went, none the wiser, it looked ok as far as I was concerned, but something was niggling away in the back of my head and didn't sit right with me...

The next morning, upon further investigation, and a quick trip to a Vauxhall dealer, It was discovered that in his 'expert knowledge and apparent ability' to repair cars he'd fitted a 'bog' standard Vectra exhaust onto my car and this then causing the paintwork on the spoiler to begin melting and turn black... (The Sri Vectra's were all fitted with a totally legal Irmscher body kit and extended exhaust tips to account for a few extra inches of the new shaped spoiler..).

A trip back to said garage and a heated conversation with the depot manager as well as the threat of some form of legal action for basically mis-selling an exhaust system that wasn't suitable for my car, as well as the resulting damage to the rear spoiler due to this, my car was quickly booked in to have the correct Irmscher exhaust fitted and the damaged spoiler to be replaced with genuine Vauxhall parts.....at no cost to me.....(they even gave me the invoices from Vauxhall),

To this day I have never used 'sh$t fit' for anything again...and neither has any of my family..

Apologies for the quick hi-jack becoming a life story...

normal service is now resumed..