I just read a letter sent to Car Mechanics magazine (Oct. page 41). It was sent by an MOT tester who went on a refresher course run by VOSA. One of the things he wrote about was that it seems as though VOSA is worried by the amount of MOT failures of front and rear springs and suspension components. VOSA is trying to go down the line that unless the springs are snapped in the "middle" they are only an “advisory”. Springs normally break on the bottom where they go into a "pigtail", this would seem now to be ok. I would have thought that any break or crack in a spring should be fail, it is too dangerous for it not to be. How much of the "pigtail" can be missing they do not say.

Springs are now to be only a visual inspection only: no running your hand up and down the spring to feel any problems. Also, joints and bushes are only failures if you can virtually separate them. All this seems to be a way of fiddling the failure figures to push though 4-2-2 MOT testing (no test until the car is four years old then every two years after), or to hide the fact that we have crap roads. If this 4-2-2 testing comes in a lot of small MOT centres will close down. Also a lot of people are not having their cars serviced due to cost, so a yearly MOT is the only time the car ever gets looked at. Is VOSA completely bonkers?