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Have a friend bringing my car back to the UK from Portugal at the end of the month (should've come back in March but covid .....), anyway, the MOT will have expired by the time she gets to Portsmouth (in the evening) so we need to arrange getting the car MOT'd the next day before travelling on. Any recommendations for getting that done?
All that's required is that you be en route to a prearranged Mot test; nothing to say where. My camper MoT ran out in France, I rang my local garage in North Wales to book it in, drove there straight from the ferry.
Will be plenty of places about that do it. Portsmouth Exhaust and Tyre Services spring to mind on the outskirts as somewhere I've used before without drama (on A27 towards Fareham). Not far out of town.
There'll be plenty of choice in the city itself.
Just bear in mind you might need to book a decent time in advance at the minute with holidays, Covid stuff etc
If you’re confident it will pass, probably easiest to use one of the Halfords garages as you can boom a slot online and they do t seem to want to keep hold of the car for too long. The one in Drayton (just off the A27 at the Eastern Rd junction) seems ok.
Don’t use Carbase on Fitzherbert Rd though, they are rubbish- slow, impossible to contact and the sort of place that will fail the car on a split wiper blade and then wait for you to call them 5 hours later to tell you before having to ‘order in’ the blade and then do a retest…
Personally I would book the MOT for where the car is going to end up, unless you are ok with repairs being done in Portsmouth.
Also I always recommend using a MOT centre that doesn't do repairs!
If you’re confident it will pass, probably easiest to use one of the Halfords garages
If you do use Halfords just be prepared for them to recommend you replace all the brake discs as they are on the 'edge'. They did this to me, 3 years later they still weren't even showing up as advisories.
I kind of think of Halfords garages in the same vein as Kwikfit.
Thanks, the original plan was to come back ourselves (well before the MOT was expired), visit family in Somerset for a few days then drive up to Suffolk (where we used to live), visit friends, take the car back to Vauxhall dealer who we bought the car from and had serviced it to sell and then fly back to Portugal from Stanstead..... quarantine still being in place and feeling a bit edgy about the escalating situation put paid to that!
Our daughters friend has been stranded here since arriving from Morocco (with two dogs in tow) in November and has been struggling to find a way to get back to Yeovil, so hopefully this solution will work out .....
Funny thing is, because we are now registered as resident in Portugal she is 'legal' to drive our car and we aren't (though we now have a Portuguese car)!
Give Semmens of Southsea a call and explain your situation and they will help you out
They are a family run garage that's been going for over 30 years and they MOT everything from Ferrari 458's to the local Taxi firm's fleet along with carrying out repairs on classics to modern cars
Been friends with Luc the manager for 20 years and the guys in there know their stuff
escrs, thanks, the FB link doesn't work but looking elsewhere they get good reviews, being close to the common may help her for the dogs sake! 🙂 She needs to go the other direction really and needs somewhere to overnight.
I always recommend using a MOT centre that doesn’t do repairs!
How does that work though if it fails on something that (legally at least) means you can't drive it away?
FWIW in years of going to halfords/kwickfit/quicklane I've never had a dubious fail, in fact I've had several dubious passes where I've asked them to do work anyway despite it being only an advisory (e.g. tyres worn on the edge but outside the 3/4 area). I used to do Saturday work at a garage that did MOT prep but not the tests themselves, we used Quicklane and never had any reason to dispute a fail with them either.
The only big(ish) bill was £200 at kwickfit for some suspension bushes (the inner end of both front control arms) which I knew were worn as they'd been clunking but I couldn't find it on the driveway. £200's not a bad price, and it took them all day to get the old ones out! The local garage that I use now didn't even mention the wheel bearing that was making so much noise it was becoming difficult to drive long distances!
Even if you take me out of the scenario, kwickfit failed my OH's fiesta for insufficient effect from the rear brakes. she phoned me, I suggested she may as well get them to fix it as worst case it's a leaking cylinder and thats only going to cost a few quid more than just pads and drums. They popped the rear wheels and drums off, blew the brake dust out, reassembled and passed it with no charge!
Done it 2x now... book it in at home.
Tried it the other way last time and it failed on suspension (even though it didnt the tester was wrong) he misread the foams on the rear leaf springs touching as overloaded but its literally the suspension design as a helper... anyway.... point being you cant sort it there and if it fails on something dramatically you're even more technically not meant to drive it.
Book it at home... drive it there.. the covid fine is technically much worse than the MOT fine.
Alexxx, yes! Hadn't considered the quarantine issues ..... I guess that hasn't changed after the 19th?