Pre IVA MOT

[white van man]

As the title says is it worth putting the car through an MOT before the IVA?

Thanks

Alex

[Mark (smokey mow)]

Yes and no! I had a very friendly garage/MOT station who did an MOT on mine before SVA without issuing a certificate and therefore not putting it through their computer and onto the MOT system.  The advantage of this was that I could legally get 20-30 road miles on the clock to give the car a shake down prior to SVA, check the emissions and look for any faults, luckily they only found a couple of bauld tyres (which they'd sold me the month before as legal) and a couple of other small points.  My next drive would be a 150 mile round trip to the SVA so I wanted to be sure it'd get me there ok.

[daverobs]

Yes

A MOT can be issued on the chassis number and with the IVA costing much more than the SVA I would have thought checking the emissions and lights as a minimum would be a good idea.

Dave

[bhouse]

It's also an opportunity to have all your spannering checked over by an independent third party. I'd say it's worth doing a bit of research and taking it to a recommended test centre where they have a reputation for understanding kit cars. If you ask on the boardroom for recommendations in your area I'm sure there'll be someone fairly close.

Brian

[daveac]

Definitely worth it as the others have said.  Quite apart from the astronomical retest cost for the IVA, I was particularly keen to know that the brakes would work for real before I had to sit in it at x-mph and do a first hand test!  Plus in my case, there was nothing like the prospect of being stranded on Bodmin Moor in mid-March to focus the mind on reliability checks.

Good luck with the test (both of them!)