Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[white exec]

I guess hope for something less complicated, try the capacitor/fuse replacement, and if not successful look at doing a trade-in against your Leaf, earlier than planned. Guessing that with the age of the Ion, trade-in value will not be affected too much by whether it is still driveable or not. The seller of the Leaf will just want the business, and would likely scrap the Ion anyway. Bad news, but maybe it just brings plans forward somewhat, without too much of a financial hit. Hopefully... Oh dear, Simon.

[Zelandeth]

Know it goes against the grain a bit, but worth checking We Buy Any Car, Cartakeback etc while it's still got a valid MOT and see what they're offering.

It's unlikely they'll be clued in to specific warning lights on the dash etc and that the car would see a relatively cursory inspection. Might be an option which gains you a bit better than scrap money at least.

[bobins]

To add insult to injury the car is due its MOT in under 4 weeks and if I can't get it fixed before then then I'll have no choice but to let the MOT lapse until it can be fixed and MOT'ed.

What do I do in this eventuality ? Do I need to apply for SORN immediately after the MOT expires or is there a reasonable grace period to get it retested ? How can I legally get the car to the MOT station after the MOT has expired ?

SORN is to do with car tax - if it is still taxed, then it doesn't need to be SORN'd. If the tax lapses, then it'll need to be SORN'd fairly promptly after it lapses (rumour has it you'd get around 2 weeks grace period though ! )
You can drive a car without an MOT directly to a booked MOT test. You can also drive it directly home afterwards if it fails - though there are all sorts of caveats if the MOT station has failed it on something dangerous and you still choose to drive it home. An MOT tester cannot stop you from driving a failed or dangerous car home, but there'd be nothing to stop them reporting a dangerous car leaving their premises if they felt particularly awkward
If a car sits on the road, then - under normal circumstances - it needs a valid MOT, current tax, and insurance*
*- that covers that car to at least the minimum insurance requirements required by law.

[Mandrake]

SORN is to do with car tax - if it is still taxed, then it doesn't need to be SORN'd. If the tax lapses, then it'll need to be SORN'd fairly promptly after it lapses (rumour has it you'd get around 2 weeks grace period though ! )

Ah OK I didn't realise SORN was an alternative to taxing rather than MOT. The tax was due to run out in March however I have already "paid" it a couple of weeks ago online. I say paid because it's only a formality when the tax is £0. So I presume that because it's now taxed until next year there would be no need to SORN it.

You can drive a car without an MOT directly to a booked MOT test. You can also drive it directly home afterwards if it fails - though there are all sorts of caveats if the MOT station has failed it on something dangerous and you still choose to drive it home. An MOT tester cannot stop you from driving a failed or dangerous car home, but there'd be nothing to stop them reporting a dangerous car leaving their premises if they felt particularly awkward
If a car sits on the road, then - under normal circumstances - it needs a valid MOT, current tax, and insurance*
*- that covers that car to at least the minimum insurance requirements required by law.

The car is/will be stored on a private driveway not the road so that shouldn't be a problem. I had wondered if it was OK to drive a car directly to an MOT station, but wasn't sure if that was only during the retest window after a failed test, or whether it could be later than that if the car was completely off the road.

One major snag though is that the MOT expires on 16th March and the insurance was set to auto-renew on the 17th of March. Am I right to assume that if it doesn't have an MOT by the 17th that the insurance will fail to renew due to no MOT on record and then it will be illegal to drive it even directly to an MOT station ?

Unfortunately the car was re-MOT'ed by the seller just before I picked it up (and set up insurance) so the timing works out badly like this...

In other news I've ordered two of the special fuses, some capacitors and some spray conformal coating (as the caps are normally part burried in potting) and I should have those within a week, so I'll start dissassembling things during the week weather permitting, and could potentially be attempting the repair next weekend, or the following weekend. I suspect the new discs and pads will arrive this week so that will be another thing to do - weather permitting!

[Hell Razor5543]

Well, if you cannot get the electronics working Alasdair has an ES9J engine looking for a new home!

viewtopic.php?p=635882#p635882

[bobins]

The car is/will be stored on a private driveway not the road so that shouldn't be a problem. I had wondered if it was OK to drive a car directly to an MOT station, but wasn't sure if that was only during the retest window after a failed test, or whether it could be later than that if the car was completely off the road.

One major snag though is that the MOT expires on 16th March and the insurance was set to auto-renew on the 17th of March. Am I right to assume that if it doesn't have an MOT by the 17th that the insurance will fail to renew due to no MOT on record and then it will be illegal to drive it even directly to an MOT station ?

Unfortunately the car was re-MOT'ed by the seller just before I picked it up (and set up insurance) so the timing works out badly like this...

First things first....... It gets complicated. There are all sorts of "Ah! but you can do this if you do that" and "Ah! but that doesn't apply to...." So this is realistically only guidelines. The only way to prove what's right and what's wrong is, ultimately, through the courts !

If the car is on your driveway then it doesn't need an MOT or insurance, but it does need to EITHER be taxed or SORNd, but if it's taxed and on your driveway without an MOT then it ought to be insured.
You can drive just about any car at any time to a booked MOT BUT....... if it's clearly dangerous or a danger to the public, the police are well within their rights to get you off the road and throw what's left of the book at you if they stop you on the way to the booked MOT.
You ought to have valid insurance if the car is taxed.
Insurance is independent of MOT. You can have insurance without a valid MOT BUT....... should your car be subject to a total loss whilst on your driveway and without an MOT, the insurers are well within their rights to only pay out scrap value as the car wasn't "in a roadworthy condition" in their eyes due to lack of MOT.
The opposite of what is you said is true - you basically have to insure a car without a valid MOT that is travelling to a booked MOT in order to be within the law.... as in: Driving it on the road ?? - therefore you need insurance.

[RichardW]

That's s bugger, Simon. I heard of a C-zero recently that had suffered the same fate. Hopefully you can fix it.

Note that continuous insurance now applies to vehicles which are taxed, so if you decide not to renew the insurance, then you will need to SORN it. If you are taking it to an MOT when it doesn't have one, make sure the garage has the reg on the booking so if you do get stopped you can show you are legit.

[bobins]

To clarify my messy description above - in Simon's case, as his car will be both taxed and insured and sitting on his driveway, he has nothing to fear from the police or DVLA even though it won't have a valid MOT. As his car is both taxed and insured, he can drive it to a booked MOT without fear from DVLA or police*. He can also drive it directly home from the MOT if it has failed*

* - providing there isn't something ludicrously dangerous to it that any reasonable person should have foreseen.

[Zelandeth]

Simple summary.

Insurance must be in place for the car to be taxed. You don't need anything else to get the insurance - though obviously if you went and had a crash in a car with no MOT the insurer would almost definitely refuse to pay out.

A valid MOT must be in place for the vehicle to be taxed. The system will refuse to let you tax it otherwise. Likewise valid insurance must be in place, this also *used to* be checked by the system so it wouldn't let you tax a car without insurance though I don't think this step takes place any more.

The car must be either on SORN or taxed at all times.

If the car even *touches* a public road it needs to be taxed and insured.

If you are taking the car to a pre-booked MOT or returning from a pre-booked MOT, the requirement for tax is nullified (as obviously you can't tax it without a valid MOT).

However you DO still need to have insurance in place before you can drive to/from the aforementioned pre-booked MOT.

SORN is automatically cancelled when you tax the car.

It's worth keeping when your tax runs out in your calendar as the DVLA have a less than perfect record of sending the reminder letters out.

There is no requirement to declare a car being kept off the road SORN when your MOT expires until the tax runs out. Though obviously you can't drive it on the road because of the rules mentioned above.

[bobins]

Under the Continuous Insurance Enforcement Scheme - "......it is an offence to be the keeper of an uninsured vehicle unless it is declared off the road with DVLA. Information is cross checked between the Motor Insurance Database (MID) and DVLA keeper records. Keepers of vehicles which appear to be uninsured are sent reminder letters. Those who take no action receive a fixed penalty notice of £100, followed by enforcement action – wheelclamping, impounding and ultimately prosecution by the courts (the maximum fine in Court is £1,000)."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dvla ... -a-vehicle

[DHallworth]

I've just been reading through this and saw your posts about brake discs. When a conventional car uses it's brakes there will be some heat generated which will in turn dry the discs off and clean them up. I wonder if the EV doing regenerative braking and not using the brakes much is causing the discs to stay wet and not get cleaned up and that's why they've corroded so quickly.

With regards to Tax, Insurance and MOT's...

All of my cars are insured all year round. A car needs no tax or MOT to be insured. When you tax a car it needs to be insured and MOT'd, if you cancel the insurance whilst it's taxed you get a letter from the DVLA telling you that you need to SORN the car. If the MOT expires whilst the car is taxed and insured you need to take no action as long as you're not using the car on the public highway.

You can legally drive a car to and from a PRE-BOOKED MOT. I do this every year as I SORN my Activa and XM over the winter so I drive them to their MOT every spring with no tax.

I hope your onboard charger is an easy enough fix.

David.

[Mandrake]

I've just been reading through this and saw your posts about brake discs. When a conventional car uses it's brakes there will be some heat generated which will in turn dry the discs off and clean them up. I wonder if the EV doing regenerative braking and not using the brakes much is causing the discs to stay wet and not get cleaned up and that's why they've corroded so quickly.

I think it's a combination of not enough friction to wear off surface rust after it develops, and not enough heat to dry out moisture to prevent it forming in the first place, as you say.

Whatever the reason is with "normal" driving (where I let the regen do its thing) the discs rust rapidly in wet weather (within a day!) and don't clear again with normal use, so in the wet weather we're having lately there is an ever present layer of surface rust accompanied by a loud grinding of rust when I use the brakes first setting off in the morning. Even on the way home from work they still grind with rust when applied.

Quality of the disc may be a factor too as some discs seem to rust more than others. For example the Xantia discs hardly rust at all - even when the car is sitting in wet weather for a long time without any use to dry the discs or rub off the rust. It can go for several weeks sitting on the driveway before any significant rust forms but in the Ion it literally happens over night so even if I work the brakes hard to clean them off a bit the next morning it is back with a vengence.

I think all EV's suffer from the issue of rust buildup on discs to some degree (most not as bad as what I'm seeing though) so ultimately there needs to be some other solution, such as using a different material than cast iron, as friction brakes just don't get used hard enough in EV's to keep them in good condition. Sure, the pads last forever but at the expense of the discs prematurely rusting away and the brakes just not working as well as they should...

With regards to Tax, Insurance and MOT's...

All of my cars are insured all year round. A car needs no tax or MOT to be insured. When you tax a car it needs to be insured and MOT'd, if you cancel the insurance whilst it's taxed you get a letter from the DVLA telling you that you need to SORN the car. If the MOT expires whilst the car is taxed and insured you need to take no action as long as you're not using the car on the public highway.

You can legally drive a car to and from a PRE-BOOKED MOT. I do this every year as I SORN my Activa and XM over the winter so I drive them to their MOT every spring with no tax.

Because I re-taxed the car before the MOT and insurance ran out it sounds like I'm OK then, and the insurance will auto-renew on the 17th with or without an MOT. Phew.

I hope your onboard charger is an easy enough fix.

Yeah, me too. If I can't fix it at the component level it's a financial disaster for me - as a working car I can sell it for over £5k (other examples of similar age and mileage are going for £5-6k) but if its non functional I might be lucky to get £2k for it as parts. And a replacement charger at > £2k to get it back working again is not much better, as that would swallow up most of the difference.

I'm trying not to stress too much about it, the weather is atrocious after work this week and I'm still waiting on the parts so this weekend is the earliest I can look at it, so until then I won't really have any idea.

[Mandrake]

Here is a picture of on onboard charger (not mine) with the lid off:

One thing that has been pointed out to me is that the onboard charger lid doesn't use a gasket it has some kind of grey silicone sealant goop to seal the lid on and make it water proof - very important as it is under the body at the rear so the outside of the casing is subject to road salt and spray. So I'll need to buy a tube of sealant to seal it back up again.

The question is, what kind of sealant will it be so I know what to buy ? The box looks to be aluminium alloy, it is subject to road salt and spray so needs to be air tight as well as water tight. I don't know how hot the box gets - not as hot as an engine but it may still get up to say 50-60C during charging. (Not sure really) Any suggestions on what to use so I can get some ordered ?

Here is a picture of the two capacitors that may have blown that need replacing: (not mine)

To replace them the potting around them has to be dug out, and while they are through hole caps getting to the underside of the board is an extremely big job, so most people doing this repair have carefully snipped the caps off the legs and soldered the new ones carefully to the old legs as this saves many hours of work and specialised tools trying to get the rest of the unit apart...

In at least one case someone had to replace one of the two white power resistors in the top of the potted section - hopefully I won't need to do that as that does require further difficulty disassembly.

[white exec]

Any liquid-gasket goo - as used on engine sumps - will do.
It's usually just polyurethane adhesive, which will also do the job. Clean up surface with solvent first.

You'll be looking for the highest spec capacitors that will fit, I guess! What a miserable thing to fail.

[Mandrake]

Any liquid-gasket goo - as used on engine sumps - will do.
It's usually just polyurethane adhesive, which will also do the job. Clean up surface with solvent first.

So many to choose from though and I don't have a clue what to order..

You'll be looking for the highest spec capacitors that will fit, I guess! What a miserable thing to fail.

They're 1000pF 6kV disc ceramic capacitors, about 10mm in diameter. One of the guys who has lead the charge on diagnosing and repairing on board charger failures has a theory that it's actually the fuse that blows first due to mechanical fatigue over many years, and that the fuse going open circuit during charging causes a huge inductive voltage spike that blows up the capacitors, which are used as snubbers. (I think the originals are not nearly as high a voltage rating as the replacements we're using)

Unfortunately it sometimes blows other components as well as the capacitors - in his own car it also blew a diode which is completely inaccessible and essentially impossible to replace. Luckily for him he's in the USA where Mitsubishi are now replacing these failed units out of warranty free of charge so he got his replaced. I'm not so lucky though!