MOTORING COSTS:IT'S VERY EARLY on a Saturday morning. I'm in my local NCT centre (again), and the man beside me is getting more and more irate with the mechanic who's explaining that his car has failed the test.
The customer is refusing to accept this verdict because he’s had the car serviced in preparation for the NCT. He waves a garage receipt at the mechanic, who says he’s sorry but there’s nothing he can do. He’s clearly heard it all before.
NCT mechanics can exercise a slight amount of discretion. For instance, they can give your dashboard a whack to encourage a wobbly speedometer light to come on (hypothetically speaking of course). Or, if one were to make the rookie error of leaving one’s hubcaps on, they can be nice and take them off for you, or they can be nasty sticklers and fail you on it.
But what they cannot do is ignore the test readings. Even if your garage told you the car was roadworthy, and even if you shout at them.
Many motorists have come to the conclusion that pre-NCT checks are an exercise in futility. As the Consumers’ Association of Ireland (CAI) points out in the latest issue of its Consumer Choice magazine, garages typically will not guarantee that a car will pass the NCT.
Furthermore, some of the work recommended by a garage may not be necessary to pass the test. For these reasons, the CAI questions the value of pre-NCT tests.
“Unless you have some legitimate concerns about the condition of your car and whether it would reasonably pass an NCT, our advice has always been to do the basic recommended checks on your car before a test and if everything is as it should be, then put your car in for the test,” the CAI suggests.
“If it fails on something, then you only have to fix this item for it to pass a re-test.” The NCT costs €50, while a re-test costs €28, though a re-test that only requires a visual inspection is free.
From June 1st onwards, preparing for the NCT will become more of a headache for drivers of older cars. After that date, cars which are 10 years or older will have to pass the NCT annually, rather than every two years which has been the situation up to now. Some motorists have concluded (in rants on various internet discussion boards) that this change is part of a masterplan to maximise revenue for the testers or for the motor industry or some other neferious group, but conspiracy theories aside, will the annual test actually improve road safety?
“I am not convinced that it is necessary,” says Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland. “Nor am I convinced that it will make a significant difference to road safety. Having said that, 10-year-old cars do require more maintenance and do break down more often than younger vehicles.”
The average annual mileage for Irish drivers is around 18,000 kilometres, so a 10-year-old car would clock up some 36,000 kilometres between the current bi-annual tests. “That is a lot, so there is some logic in an annual test,” he says.
So for those of us who have resisted the scrappage scheme and held on to our veteran vehicles, how can we make sure that getting a clean bill of motoring health once a year won’t end up costing us more than our mode of transport is actually worth?
One of the simplest ways to save money on servicing is to source any necessary car parts yourself through websites such as micksgarage.ie, where parts can be up to 40 per cent cheaper than they would be through a garage. Micksgarage has almost one million parts for sale through its site, and has a clever sourcing device to help customers figure out what they need. Simply enter your car registration and the type of part you require, for example brake pads, and it will tell you exactly which type of brake pad you should get for your car. You can then opt to have the part delivered directly to your garage, if you wish.
Ciaran Crean, managing director of Micksgarage, says if you suggest to a garage that you’ll source a part yourself, they are very likely to agree to this (unless they also run a parts business), and will just charge for the labour of fitting it, which may be about €60 an hour. He explains that garages generally make a very small margin on sourcing car parts, which can be time-consuming. “It takes time away from their core business which is labour,” Crean says.
The most popular items on Micksgarage.ie are wiper blades and bulbs. Although you won’t make huge savings by buying them online, if you fit them yourself you can avoid being charged as much as half an hour’s labour by a garage. Changing oil and air filters is also very do-able for the average car owner. Over the past year, Crean has noticed a large increase in the number of customers adding Haynes manuals – the bible of the DIY car-maintenance world – into their online shopping basket, along with “service items” such as wipers, bulks and filters. “That’s a statement of intent,” he says. “This is a person who’s going to do the work themselves.”
The CAI suggests that before going for the test, motorists download the NCT manual from ncts.ie as it includes details of many straightforward things that even the “non-mechanically minded” can easily check, such as headlamps, wipers, oil and fluid levels and so on.
Tempting as it might be to scrimp on servicing costs, the experts all agree that neglecting the maintenance needs of your car is a false economy. In the experience of the AA, the single largest cause of breakdowns is defective batteries. Batteries usually need to be changed every five years.
Breakdowns are also caused by worn tyres leading to punctures or collisions, and blocked filters.
“These are all prevented by proper maintenance, so it is a false economy to put off servicing,” says Faughnan. “Not servicing a car will also worsen fuel consumption, which is particularly relevant at the moment.”
More worryingly, the most common fault the AA is finding with cars as they service them is badly-worn brake pads, so perhaps more regular NCT tests aren’t such a bad thing after all.
