Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Bugger!

I have spent the past three and a half months building a Caterham Seven kit car. Today I took it to the DVSA (vehicles inspectorate). The inspector has worked there for the last fifteen years and has never passed an amateur built car the first time. I passed the external projections tests, the build quality tests, brake effort, brake pedal effort, speedo accuracy, noise, seat belt anchorages, he approved the suspension geometry, and liked the way it drove (He’s keen on hill climbs, I gave him permission to put his foot down and we went round the test centre a couple of time at about 40 mph, mostly sideways, and filled the car with gravel)

In the end today was no different from the last 15 years. The car failed its emissions tests, and its very frustrating because whatever the fault is it will be with something that Caterham supplied to me. The next retest appointment is a month away and I’m looking down the barrel of £800 in transport fees to get Caterham to look at a vehicle that we can’t legally drive on the roads.


Richard “Stoichiometry” B

No comments:

Post a Comment