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Well, rules need to be written to avoid ambiguity and to some extent create clear pass/fail boundaries, so they tend to exclude nuance and judgement.
The basis of a bodge, at least the way I'm using the term, in an MOT context, is to hide, rather than properly repair, a structural fault. This indicates only applying it to marginal non-critical faults that in my judgement arent likely to kill me, and it also means I cant be absolutely sure that these were MOT fails, since it was critical that the tester didn't become aware of them.
One of them was a perforation through the rear of both the front wheel arches on an 1800 Marina, which had a huge rot trap there. I used the bonding plaster to re-create the surface contour, which I then covered with GRP amd underseal. Quite a long way from suspension mounts, but quite big holes.
PASS. It may have helped that the tester was distracted by my super-strong genuine reconstruction of both chassis rails bottoms and outriggers, probably because I'd re-designed them to use continuous flange welds, which pretty much do themselves, but look different. He spent quite a long time hitting them quite hard with a BFH, totally against the MOT rules, and apparently quite tiring
I used a thin layer of concrete on a wire mesh armature (a similar structure to that used on ferrocement yachts at the time), inside the drivers side chassis outrigger on my Mk1 Lada to reinforce the crumbly outside, . It seemed fairly strong (I wrote off a Fiesta that pulled out in front of me later with no significant damage to the Lada) and I never use "official"jacking points (the outrigger main function) anyway
This kind of thing would probably be harder to get away with nowadays because bituminous underseal, which can hide a multitude of sins, probably isnt in nearly as much use on older cars as it was then, perhaps partly because people have reaslised that it tends to encourage rust
Edited by edlithgow on 22/04/2025 at 12:15
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