Close but no cigar

Sadly,  IVA was a fail but for minor stuff so one more test should do it.

I had hoped for a dry day and I got that OK,  as well as 32 degC,  hottest day of the year so far. With hindsight,  a test centre in West London was not the best choice when you need to get there by 8am through rush hour. Well,  I'd hoped leaving at 6am would mean missing rush hour but I didn't  realise how early rush hour starts these days. The heat was the main problem and I had images of me breaking down before I even got there.  The gauge hovered just below the 100 mark the whole time,  with the fan going pretty constantly but no leaks,  which was good.

For the first 28 miles,  everything was fine and then,  2 miles from the centre,  my throttle started sticking on. I managed to struggle the last 2 miles but I couldn't work out what the problem was - everything looked fine. The test bloke was very good about it and started the test anyway while I had a think. While he was doing his stuff,  I called GBS and Richard suggested it must be the cable or pedal - I had been concentrating on the throttle body. With the pedal box open,  I realised the heat must have expanded the bolt that the throttle pedal pivoted on,  making it very stiff. A quarter turn to loosen it and all OK.

Not the impression I wanted to make 5 minutes after arrival:

Waiting in the torture chamber:

While the box was off,  the tester checked inside and wasn't happy with one of my brake lines into the master cylinder - it had a slight kink and some damage; a small graze on the side. So,  10 minutes in,  I knew I was going to fail, which was very depressing.

In total,  he found a few other faults;

1. Front brake line to caliper of twisted at full lock.
2. Rear brake line touching wishbone.
3. Steering rack gaiter touching wishbone at full lock and too close to the panel on the other side. I had checked this early on in my build but I recently lowered the front suspension to help with self-centering and I think that is what has caused that.
4. Handbrake not strong enough.
5. Rear brakes slightly stronger than the front brakes.

So a pretty simple list to fix except for the brakes - how do you make brakes weaker?

He said the self-centering was pretty minimal but he let me off and he didn't even check the front indicator height,  so that wasn't an issue.

Unbelievably, the emissions test sailed through - it took him longer to get the gas analyser working! Huge thanks to Simon (ex-GBS) for his emissions map and instructions on how to adjust it - worked a charm and promising for future MOTs.

Interestingly, he didn't seem to do a noise test or check the side mirror views and he made no comment about the edge trim on my steering wheel spokes.

I was very impressed with how the car handled the heat and traffic; I did have nightmares about breaking down in the middle of rush hour.

So,  a slightly disappointing day but,  with hindsight, it could have been much worse and most of those failures I couldn't have foreseen.

On with the fixes...