Last year it passed with only an advisory of a minor exhaust leak and an advisory for "front brake flexi hose cracking", but a lot has happened to this car since then as anyone following my threads knows.
I've done what I can and I think it has a good chance of passing, but here are my areas of slight concern:
* Front brake flexi's have not been replaced since the last MOT. To me they look just fine with no sign of cracking so I really don't know what the testers were on about. I would have done then by now if I wasn't putting out so many other fires on the car, so to speak...
* Slight knock from the front left suspension on potholes, droplinks and track rod joints have already been done, I suspected a lower balljoint last year and bought a pair of Lemforder lower balljoints which I still have, however it passed the MOT last time without even a mention of it, so either they didn't find it or the noise is something else. If they fail it on this I'll just ask them to fit one of the balljoints I already have, as I don't want to tackle that job. (Having done one before with far better facilities than I have now!)
* Front right steel brake pipe that feeds the front right flexi has an unusual looking exploded clump of rust where it passes above the cross member. Not visible from below, only visible from above looking down between the engine and wing. Scraping it back and painting it may have hidden it but I just haven't had a chance to deal with it amongst all the other issues. If they catch this one I'll probably get a cupro nickel pipe made by Pleadies and fit that.
* Oxygen sensor is a bit iffy despite being replaced in March. Seems to be working when tested today and a few days ago, but on occasions seems to stop responding. Still under warranty but I only confirmed it was intermittent a few days ago so no time to get a replacement or fit it before the test.
* Suspected intermittent ignition related misfire. Again.
The car is intermittently down on power and I believe a misfire is part of that. If its misfiring during the emissions test tomorrow the HC's will be through the roof and the lamba will be thrown out too. The misfire usually only happens under load so may not be provoked by the no-load emissions test however.* The catalytic converter suffered through a few months of intermittent under-load misfire over the last 9 months, so I'm not sure that it's still ok. There's no back pressure so it probably hasn't melted down but until the emissions test is done I won't know whether its efficiency is still ok as there is only a single oxygen sensor. The only things on my side is that the factory cat on the V6 seems to be as tough as old boots, and an under load ignition misfire on a waste spark system will sometimes ignite the un-burnt mixture in the exhaust header before it gets to the cat so that the cat doesn't take the brunt of the strain. (Not good for the exhaust pipe though!)
* Today I've just noticed a minor hydraulic leak which looks like its coming from a low pressure return hose on the left hand side of the engine bay. The hose is attached to a K junction which also has a pressure switch on it - so I'm assuming its the priority valve ? I didn't think the priority valve had a low pressure return hose on it though...
Here it is from a couple of different angles:
Can anyone identify the source of the leak ? I also noticed that the main feed pipe where it goes from a steel pipe to a large flexible pipe was also wet at the junction, but which has leaked onto which I'm not sure. Also bizarely there was quite a bit of oil up on the under side of the cruise control vacuum pump and the surrounding conduit, and I can't see how that got there from either of the potential leak sources.
Would replacing that hose clip with a jubilee clip help if that's the source of the leak, or is the problem likely to be more sinister ? I've wiped the area clean so hopefully the leak is negligible and they won't pick up on it.
Other than these I'm not aware of any potential fail issues, all the lights and electrics are working, (except cruise control) washers and wipers, horn, brakes are working well, suspension is working well, tyres are good, (except for one slightly out of balance) there are no other hydraulic leaks that I can see apart from the one pictured above.
Fingers crossed.
