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How much does it usually cost you to get your car a MOT pass?

Just had my pass certificate back today for my car's MOT. anti roll bar problem and mainly bulbs, handbrake required adjustment, and silly minor stuff and car diagnostic to check for faults which returned zero fault code so that was a waste of of £50.

so to pass my MOT this year cost me £180

£45- MOT
£45- Diagnostics ( waste of time and money)
£90 to make adjustments and tiny minor repairs

usually each year it's around £200 + to get a MOT pass for me

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 1

JVD

My car is a 2011, and the first time I had to get it MOT'ed (exempt for first 3 years as new) was about 10 months ago, which didn't really cost anything other than the MOT fee.

Reply 2

DeceitfulDove

My car's had 4 MOTs and has just been £40 a time.

Reply 3

Nuffles

I drive a mid 90's VW. I bought it with a fresh MOT just over a year ago so it's just had one. Paid about a hundred quid for the MOT and parts (new lower front arms/bushes/balljoints) and did the work myself. And then £250 on top of that for welding, which wasn't unexpected and definitely not as bad as a lot of cars several years newer so I'm not worried about hanging onto it for another few years. Considering how much some people spend on MOTs I got off fairly lightly.

Reply 4

dhr90

Last year it required a £5 adjustment of headlights (by the previous owner) to get it to pass. But it had 2 pages of advisories. Need to get it MOTed next week. Part of me wants it fail hideously so that I have an excuse to buy something nicer, but I'd rather not spend the money...

Reply 5

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

Original post by Astra owner

All the cars ive had have only cost me the £40 ish MOT fee. None of them have ever failed or had to have other money spent on them.
£200+ is a lot per year to get an MOT pass.

Reply 6

Nuffles

Original post by Emma:-)

All the cars ive had have only cost me the £40 ish MOT fee. None of them have ever failed or had to have other money spent on them.
£200+ is a lot per year to get an MOT pass.

It depends how old the car is. Ideally I'd love my car to pass problem free each time, but then my car's almost 20 years old. I don't mind paying a bit more come MOT time because it cost me less to initially buy (£800) and I can do 90% of the work myself, unlike modern cars which do still go wrong, but at more more complicated and costly to repair. Also I get to drive something with a bit of character - I vastly prefer it over more modern cars.

Reply 7

Astra owner

Original post by Nuffles

Reply 8

Astra owner

I don't Buckingham care if you can do the work yourself, so what

Reply 9

Nuffles

Original post by Astra owner

I don't Buckingham care if you can do the work yourself, so what

It saves me a lot of money! :tongue:

You know that £40 test you paid for? I plug my laptop into my car and I can run scans for faults, clear faults, and mess with things like injection timing. It cost me about £20 and has saved me something like £200 so far by being able to run the scans myself.

Reply 10

Walter Ego

Take your car to a council MOT testing station, the place where they do the buses, fire engines, ambulance etc.

Try hidden council test centres

They never do any repairs, so have no vested interest in failing your car just to make a few quid.

Also, NEVER buy a VW of 5yo or older !!!!!!!

Reply 11

Nuffles

Original post by Walter Ego

Haha what? It's the new ones that have the problems! My two mk3s have been the most reliable cars I've owned. The only things broken on my car at the moment is one of the rear electric windows, but that's only because a friend broke it and hasn't paid me the £30 for a new winder mechanism yet :tongue:

Oh, and one of the belt tensioners is making a racket, but that'll survive for another couple of thousand miles yet. I think 2000-2010 was a bad time for VW, but their older stuff is great. The girlfriend wants a mk2 once she passes her test :colone:

Reply 12

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

Original post by Nuffles

If its a classic car then fair enough, you can warrant spending slightly more come MOT time, but if its not a classic car, then it would be a lot to spend EVERY year on an MOT and id be thinking about getting another car.

Reply 13

Nuffles

Original post by Emma:-)

To put it another way, I bought my car for £800 quid. It's a '97 so definitely not a classic. If I paid £200 a year for the MOT, I'd still be ahead ten years later than if I bought a car for £3000 and only spent £40 per MOT assuming you spent money on nothing else. Stuff goes wrong with £3000 cars too though, so it'd take even longer to even out. It seems like a lot, but in terms of the overall cost of motoring, it's really not that bad. I'm just spreading the up front cost of a more expensive car out over several years by paying more to keep an older, cheaper car on the road. People waste vast amounts of money on newer cars, only to shell out when they go wrong too. I'd rather just pay less to start with and not be surprised when I need to fit a new suspension arm or alternator every year or so.

Reply 14

JC.

Costs me £29.99 for an MOT.

But then I'm not stupid enough to actually part with money for a Crapstra!

Reply 15

Alfissti

Never had to pay for a MOT or had a car need something in order to pass the MOT.

What kind of rubbish cars you lot drive??

Reply 16

Nuffles

Original post by Alfissti

Never had to pay for a MOT or had a car need something in order to pass the MOT.

What kind of rubbish cars you lot drive??

The car I can comfortably and realistically afford.

Reply 17

Alfissti

Original post by Nuffles

The car I can comfortably and realistically afford.

You mean to say you only replace parts on it the day it needs the MOT done and for the 364 days per year you don't do anything to maintain it?

Reply 18

Nuffles

Original post by Alfissti

You mean to say you only replace parts on it the day it needs the MOT done and for the 364 days per year you don't do anything to maintain it?

I replace parts as and when they need doing. Some things needed doing for a while, but weren't critical items. I was just too lazy and/or busy to get around to doing it until it was needed for the MOT. A good chunk of what I paid this year was for welding, and there's not much point doing that until just before the MOT because more areas could become issues in the elapsed time before the MOT. It went in for its MOT two weeks before it was due to give me time to sort out anything that came up in the test before it ran out.