This issue takes a look at a submission from club
member Ian Crawford, who had a problem
with his brakes at MOT time, something we all
want to avoid!
Having owned my Type 2 for 43 years, I have
never had an MOT failure, until September
2015.
If failed on the brakes being “unequal” from the
N/S readings compared to the O/S readings
when tested on the rolling road.

The tester said I had 10 days in which to get
the problem sorted and return for a free retest.
I immediately drove to the garage I have used
for 43 years (Francis Tuthill), to see if he could
resolve the problem for me within the 10 day
window.
I showed Francis the above figures and his
immediate response was to say “you probably
don’t use your brakes all that much. I’ve come
across this situation before”.
His response was to jump into my van and
drive it around the village for about 5 minutes
doing numerous “emergency stops” in order to
get the brake linings warmed up. On returning
he said I should go back to the MOT garage
now and get it retested as he couldn’t find
anything wrong with them.
This I did and when retested the brake figures
obtained were now:

My van now passed its MOT. Panic over! So
the moral of all this is if, like me, you don’t drive
all that many miles a year and you tend to
hardly use the brakes “in anger”, make sure you
warm them up before going for your MOT as
you might end up like I did, with a (temporary)
MOT failure.