Stiffer MoT

Sir,

It is possible for Mr. Wheatcroft (letter, July) to obtain from any Government book shop a thin tome entitled “The MoT Tester’s Manual – Vehicle Testing”. He should be sure to get the blue one published in 1976, not the buff one first published 1960, and it will cost £2.

In this excellent work all the secrets of the tester’s art are revealed for instance “Care must be taken to distinguish between relative movement due to excessive wear, and relative movement due to built-in clearance or spring loading of a joint”. What a multitude of frailties that sentence can cover even Ford kingpins.

Mr. Wheatcroft (or anyone else with similar problems) might also find it helpful to obtain from the Vintage Sports Car Club a copy of its Bulletin 137, which contains a blow-by-blow account of how A. Contributor penuaded his local tester working to the new book to pass his Ford A, whose brakes are certainly no better than those on the B.

Winchester T. J. THRELFALL