NCT Fail

Had the test this morning.
Gave her an oil service last night and checked everything and it all appeared fine.
Went to the centre and gave a last look around the car and all bulbs were working fine.
As soon as the tester brought the car into the centre, I saw him turn on the lights and guess what - the passenger side dip bulb had decided to die! So he couldn't check the headlamp alignment and therefore an instant fail. I wouldn't have minded but I have spares inside the car but obviously couldn't do anything about it.
Anyhow, he told me that he decided then to throw in the borderline items - the passenger side front balljoint and also claims that the passenger side headlamp reflector was worn (which I'm 99% sure its not - just the angels were always dimmer on that side (but not the headlamp itself)).
Anyhow, I'm not going to do anything about the reflector and will get AC to do the balljoint but its all because of a feckin bulb!

That's annoying. 

I had a lucky escape a while back with a 325i where the abs light came up intermittently.  The local $tealer couldn't be bothered to sort it out in a hurry for me (they couldn't read the diags and wouldn't go any further about the abs light or the diags) and I didn't have time to get it to John between that and the test.  The light came up when I started the car to go to the test but thankfully it didn't light up during the test! 

Turned out a dodgy ABS relay was preventing getting in to the diags and the light was, as expected, a faulty abs sensor.  30 mins later I was away with everything sorted.  The $tealer charged �70-ish for connecting the car to the diags, disconnecting it and washing it.

Sorry to hear that Killian .. Had test myself yesterday on the E30 was sure they would find fault but it sailed through  happy days for two more years

 I always book the test on line and I make sure that I choose an early Sunday morning booking, preferably before 9.00am. I have discovered that testers usually begin their weeks work on Sunday's. They are human beings like ourselves and are more cheerful and more communicative at the beginning of their week's work. Relief testers usually work the weekend shift. These relief testers are usually rostered to work in any of 3 test centers that are relatively close to each other. Relief testers might work 1 to 3 days in one test center and then work at another center. My experience in dealing with them has been favourable in all occassions, in that any minor fault that can be rectified by me after the test, such as the fitting of a bulb etc. will be looked on favourably. I most certainly would never accept a Friday evening booking after a miserable wet week and maybe a bank holiday weekend thrown in for good measure.        &nbs p; 

Had my retest this morning and with no work to fix this 'issue' with the passenger side headlamp reflector, I was actually quite anxious last night (and became somewhat of an expert on the legislation).
Anyhow, the tester (different guy from last month) spent quite a while inputting something into the PC after he checked the side indicators and the headlamp condition.
When all was done (and he told me that I passed) I queried how I failed on the reflector and yet with no work done to 'fix' it, it passed. The tester just said, "I know, I saw that" and then went on to say "forget about it".When I asked for the old test sheet back (he took it from me at the start), he said that he wasn't allowed to let me have it!
Very suspicious! Still, I don't care now, I passed my test!

larzyh wrote: Edit: Congratulations for passing the test, KB!

Cheers!
Not bad for a car that was written off (beyond economic repair) less than a year ago!