406oc.co.uk

My 2ltr HDi 406 is due its latest MOT which is my first with her.

I booked her into kwik fit but after dropping off the car they called me up and said that before the MOT started, they required proof of a recent cam belt change. I couldnt provide proof so they refused to do the test!!

This is my first diesel car so i had no idea about this, has anyone else encountered this strange rule??

On another note, my car has done 118000 miles, and i do not actually know when or if the belt has been changed. is there any way of telling by the look? I am wondering if it worth booking into a real garage with real mechanics and getting the belt changed then the MOT sorted. Any ideas of how much the belt change would be?

Thanks

Hi.
Sadly this is normall nowadays. It's all to do with the smoke test which involves reving the engine flat out to the rev limiter. If the cam belt is old, it can break during this destroying the engine.

If you plan on keeping the car, get the cam belt and water pump changed and then get it tested.

And Quick Fit, or sh*t fit, or what ever. I think that most people on here would tend to stay away from them.

Enjoy your car.

Richard.

So cambelt and water pump at the same time. Any ideas of cost?

The mot tester never asked me about cam belt,
didnt see him rev it high either,

Take it to a differmt mot station,
Avoid kwik thick

Never heard of this one - sounds like a tremendous quantity of bullshit to me.

Take the car to an independant garage. Kwik Fit are to be avoided.

This cropped up a few weeks back on the forum

According to DoT website, the cambelt does need to be in good condition in order to perform the test
I inferred that there was probably a lot of testing stations that didn't do this part of the test correctly for fear of getting sued for damage caused by a snapped belt

highlander wrote:Never heard of this one - sounds like a tremendous quantity of bullshit to me.

Take the car to an independant garage. Kwik Fit are to be avoided.

i agree with that, kwik fit are just one of those companys i would not use if they was the last on earth .

as for the cambelt and water pump changed , dont expect much change from £300

I got asked this last year when my 406 went for it's MOT. It's because of the smog test and a fair few people have had belts snap during it and then claim from the Test station. It's becoming more and more common practice to save the test stations being responsible for snapping a cam belt and valves having sex with pistons causing a lot of damage

So if you did it yourself you have no actual proof it's been changed so you can't get an MOT? That's just insane. What about signing a waiver before hand? Then I suppose this would give the monke.. sorry, mechanics carte blanch to see how long they can hold your engine at full revs before it goes bang

You can't really check if a belt is in good condition - besides lifting the cover and witnessing visible deterioration, by then, it's usually too late!

Sounds like they are either trying for you to get the belt and pump done, or they are covering themselves if something does go snap - or a combination of the both!

I was just asked and explained why they were asking. Guess the bigger companies like sh*t sorry Kwik-Fit, National Tyres etc will have more paperwork but your mate in the back street garage who helps you will probably take asking as enough

Mine is due for test next month, last year it was tested by Kwik Fit as I had a free MoT voucher. I took her in expecting many failures on the bits they sell but amazingly it failed on head light alignment, which I already knew about as the previous owner had bumped the front end and fixed the headlight back in with self tappers, new light from the breakers and she went straight through the retest!!!

I wasn't asked about a cam belt change and it had 164,000 on the clock at the time, sitting on the bank opposite having a smoke I'd say from the engine sound he held the revs at around 3000 with the probe in the exhaust for about 30 seconds and was happy with that.

Maybe it depends on whether the guy testing it had a row with her indoors the night before???

gumby6371 wrote: Maybe it depends on whether the guy testing it had a row with her indoors the night before???

When I was a manager at Asda many moons ago, we just used to deal with the aftermath of miserable people like that

Instead of letting them bring you down as well I'd just say to another manager "They obviously didn't have sex last night"

My MOT was done by Peugeot stealer. Not sure how they did the REVs bit as the car was in permanent limp mode. Won't
rev passed 2800 revs, can't complain though, they still passed it. They didn't ask about the belt being replaced, car had
114k on the clock.

paulb2004uk wrote:My MOT was done by Peugeot stealer. Not sure how they did the REVs bit as the car was in permanent limp mode. Won't
rev passed 2800 revs, can't complain though, they still passed it. They didn't ask about the belt being replaced, car had
114k on the clock.

If they can't rev it they can't rev it, simple as

When I took out lorry, an Iveco Eurocargo for it's annual test, they couldn't do the emissions!
Reason is, they similarly have to rev it flat out to test
However, the Eurocargo is fitted with a protection system that doesn't allow it to rev much past half revs in stationary
Couldn't fail it for that, so had to let it pass