Damn Rain!

[CJ]

Is this rain ever gonna stop?! I've been looking to stick on my old black diamond disks with new Pagid pads for 2 weeks now but the weathers been sh!te. Why didn't I buy that house with the garage!

Ciaran

[Eamon]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I currently live in an apartment with
underground parking, which is kinda sloped, so is not really safe
for jacking the car up. I have just bought a house with a garage
and once I move in, I'll be hoping to do a fair bit of servicing
myself. On another note, I had the FTO in for NCT a couple of weeks
ago and they tried to fail it on emissions. The same thing happened 2
years ago so I had the cat replaced and it passed easily after that. I
explained to the NCT guys that the cat was relatively new, showed them
the previous NCT cert from the retest 2 years ago ( so they could see how low the emissions were) and they agreed to test it again there and then. The guy who tested it the second time eventually got it through and said that the reason it was failing was that it is very difficult to get the engine oil up to sufficient temperature. He eventually got the temp up by revving the sh1t out of it.
He also told me that some cars are not required to have the thermometer placed in the oil, just on the engine block itself, which I would assume gets a lot hotter than the oil.
For the record, 2 years ago it passed with an oil temp of 53 degrees, this time he had to get the temp up to 66 degrees for it to pass.
Oh and 2 years ago, the test showed an imbalance between the front shocks. This time there was no imbalance, even though I haven't touched the shocks during that time. Just wondered how well calibrated their equipment is.

[soc]

Just wondered how well calibrated their equipment is.

On top of that the question should be asked about the testers - my experience is that depending on the car they can be "more" thorough. I had a 1990 205 GTI through the NCT about 2 months before the FTO and the difference in attitude by the testers was amazing. With the 205 they took ages and looked at everything very carefully. With the FTO it was done in half the time. I watched them do both cars and things like checking the seats are secure, seat belts function etc. were hardly done on the FTO while on the 205 they almost pulled the seasts out of the subframes to check them!