Page 23 - Transport Talk Issue 143

THE MECHANIC
NEW
Transporter Talk No 143
Welcome to a new feature of Transporter Talk, introducing “The Mechanic”.
The Mechanic will feature some technical talk every issue and welcomes member submissions. Please send any submissions to mechanic.vwt2oc@icloud.com
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.
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 nd anything wrong with them.
This I did and when retested the brake gures obtained were now:
Front
Rear Handbrake
N/S O/S
292 285 280 312 230 312
Front
Rear Handbrake
N/S O/S
252 335 259 199 234 94
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.
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 gures and his immediate response was to say “you probably don’t use your brakes all that much. I’ve come across this situation before”.
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