British Bureaucracy, the MOT and my Pilot Light's gone out.

Remind me why we have MOT's again?

I lived in California for four years and they don't have MOT's over there, at all. You can drive any old pile of crap into the ground. A cop can give you a ticket for belching smoke or a light out or a bald tyre but even then only when they feel like it. It was heaven...sigh.

But in England there's a licence to print money called an MOT. There may be nothing wrong with your bike or car but every year you've got to pay someone to look it over, find stuff wrong, and charge you the earth to fix something that makes no difference to the bike whatsoever but it's an MOT failure...yawn. I must've spent bazillions of already massively-taxed money on rusty sills on a mini or an old Triumph or some other such meaningless problem, as if the car was going to fall apart whilst driving down the road!?

So I've just had to spend £300 getting stuff fixed, (unnoticeable things to me - ) and then it went in for it's final check for the MOT...and it failed...on the f*&!ing pilot light on the front! I mean, gimme a break. There's two giant headlights and then this little captain-caveman-candle AAA-battery-powered ickle light above them, and mine doesn't work, so it's an MOT fail. The air was and continues to be blue. Not the MOT guy's fault I might add, not mad at him, mad at the pettiness of England and stupid laws that benefit no-one, like the MOT.

As has been pointed out on here before and many other places, you can get an MOT and the bike can still be horribly dangerous within 24 hours but you don't need to get it tested again for a year. Ridiculous. After 6 months of heavy riding you could have bald tyres, bulbs out, fork problems, brakes shot, exhaust blowing...but you don't need an MOT for another 6 months. It is a joke, a complete an utter joke.

Rant over.

Sooo. What's the quickest way to get in behind that little pilot light? It's not the bulb unfortunately and so is a wiring fault. I don't have a wire colour diagram and so can't even diagnose it looking at the loom. It looks like I have to take the upper fairing right off as it's on the back of there, and then trace back. I can see the various screws but wondered if anyone had any top tips about the quickest way into that area. I doubt if it's a fuse as nothing else is out and I can't believe there'd be a fuse just for that little light. Apart from a molecule inside one of the piston rings, this looks to be the most damnable place to get to on the SV. Right now, I'm thinking chainsaw or sledgehammer.

Yours sincerely, frustrated of Hertfordshire.

[timwilky]

I am a keen advocate of the MOT system, it is no where near perfect. But when I have seen some of the death traps I can only say thank god there is at least that annual check when things should be right.

especially with a bike, it is bad enough all the idiots out there trying to kill us without your bike doing it as well. (Never had a bike fail, I ensure it is always right)

Is that light even neccesary? Like as long as the two main ones work...?

Like try somewhere more friendly..

sorry cant help you out on the pilot light, but does seem strange that in culture such as America where taking someone to court over the slightest thing and "sueing their ass off" your vehicle doesnt have to pass any inspection to prove its road worthy, must leave huge gaps in rta type law suites. Seems like the good ol USA is behind on this or maybe with a depleted bank account in mind in front

[yorkie_chris]

So why not learn the difference between one end of a spanner and the other and stop whinging when it costs you £300 because you don't.

Does the sidelight come on when you put the parking lights on?

JamieBridges123 - I know, what difference does that light make? None but I think it falls under the "if it's fitted, then it should work" rule. Like seatbelts on old cars, if they weren't fitted when new, you don't need them for an MOT or to drive the car, same as airbags and side-impact-protection-crisp-packets, etc. It's not about safety, else ALL cars would have to have these safety features. You can drive a milk float, a black cab, a tractor and some other vehicles without a seatbelt too. It is, as I said, a joke.

As for the Americans, I know, it is very strange. With a population of 300 million, all with 8 cars each, hugely crowded freeways and cities, a hair-trigger when it comes to litigation and of course good old fashioned American stupidity, not to mention the safety nuts, PC crowd and the Mother's Majority type lobby groups, you'd think they'd have an MOT every week! But no. I can't speak for all the states but certainly California, Nevada, Oregon and Connecticut don't have any kind of MOT and as you can drive anywhere in any car, and live anywhere you like and take your car with you, it seems unlikely they've got MOT-style safety checks in any of the other states but I could be mistaken. Strikes me as very odd (read sensible) and given the immense fallibility of the British system, I just don't understand it.

Does anyone know what the state of play is in Europe with regards MOT's? Rest of the World?

[yorkie_chris]

So you'd rather have every chav and his dog out there with no pressure AT ALL to keep their already barely roadworthy heaps of $hit even remotely safe?

An MOT is £35 or so a year. I'm happy to pay that because I think it improves my chances of staying alive on the roads. Not because of my own bike, I know that's fine, but for all the other spastics who are intent on killing me every day.

Originally Posted by Feldspar

JamieBridges123 - I know, what difference does that light make? None but I think it falls under the "if it's fitted, then it should work" rule. Like seatbelts on old cars, if they weren't fitted when new, you don't need them for an MOT or to drive the car, same as airbags and side-impact-protection-crisp-packets, etc. It's not about safety, else ALL cars would have to have these safety features. You can drive a milk float, a black cab, a tractor and some other vehicles without a seatbelt too. It is, as I said, a joke.

As for the Americans, I know, it is very strange. With a population of 300 million, all with 8 cars each, hugely crowded freeways and cities, a hair-trigger when it comes to litigation and of course good old fashioned American stupidity, not to mention the safety nuts, PC crowd and the Mother's Majority type lobby groups, you'd think they'd have an MOT every week! But no. I can't speak for all the states but certainly California, Nevada, Oregon and Connecticut don't have any kind of MOT and as you can drive anywhere in any car, and live anywhere you like and take your car with you, it seems unlikely they've got MOT-style safety checks in any of the other states but I could be mistaken. Strikes me as very odd (read sensible) and given the immense fallibility of the British system, I just don't understand it.

Does anyone know what the state of play is in Europe with regards MOT's? Rest of the World?

Think alot of EU countries have mot systems but at the same time no road tax - which as usual means we do get shafted by different rules to the rest of broader community to which we belong.Having said that have to agree with some of the other posts speaking as a biker I feel much more comfortable going out knowing that other road users vehicles are tested at least once a year for braking efficiency etc.. As for the rest of the world I know that places like Aus and New Zealand will let you drive in any old piece of ****.
The long and short of it my friend is now your back in old blighty you have to pay the man (as the americans would say)

'ere we go...

I do know one end of a spanner from t'other and used to do ground-up restoration for show-winning classic cars. However I don't have a fully equiped garage at my disposal anymore and I don't have any of the specialist tools. I don't actually have a great deal of money at all, hence why I'm driving a beat up 10 year 20,000 mile SV. I service the bike myself and will do simple stuff but outside of that it's impossible. Also, working on bikes ain't like working on cars, as with cars there's a greater safety net if you get something wrong whereas with bikes it more easily could be fatal so I'd rather have a Suzuki-approved garage work on the bike. I'm not whining about paying good money to have good work done, I'm aggrieved about the fact that the work is being driven by a flawed system that purports to safety but doesn't really work. I'm not against an MOT system, and I too want all vehicles to be safe but checking them once a year clearly doesn't cut it, does it.

The MOT lacks credibility. You'd need to do it every month or have regular spot checks (like weigh-stations for lorries) on roads up and down the country to really begin to say that you're on top of the safety aspect. How many bikers do you know who put things on and take things off their bike specifically to get it through the MOT and then reverse it all 10 minutes later? You don't think that makes it a bit of a joke? As I said, the MOT also doesn't guarantee any kind of safety as the interval is so long before the next test that anything could happen.

I said to the guy that if I bought the bike back in an hour, with that little light fixed, would he just sign it off? He of course said no, quite rightly so, he shouldn't risk his MOT cert and anything could happen even if I only live half a mile from the test station. So fair play to him I say. But if his point is that the integrity of the MOT could be compromised in that hour, (i.e. all the things he's already checked, could theoretically fail drastically and thus be dangerous), then why is it alright to then leave it a YEAR after he's re-checked it?

That's all I'm saying.

[yorkie_chris]

So out of curiosity what cost you £300?

To be honest it just sounds to me like you're having a whinge. £300 will sort you out with most if not all the basic tools needed to do a near total rebuild of an SV, they're a simple bike. Re. knowing one end of a spanner from another, obviously not too well or else you would trust your own workmanship.