MOT Regulations & Seats

[Lord Croker]

Any MOT testers on here who would be kind enough to give me an opinion on the following?
My Mini is a 1981 998 HL, so it has tilting & locking front seats, I am considering fitting a Cobra Clubman drivers seat & I can get the tilt & lock subframe as required by the new MOT regulations, but someone has pointed out that the high back design of the seat will prevent it tilting as far as the original, possibly restricting access to the rear passenger area. Will this be considered to be in breach of the regulations? My local MOT tester is a very helpful guy, but all the seats of that type he has seen are in Rally cars & bolted solidly to the floor, (what happens to them?) but he said he would be happy to make a judgement as lenient as possible when the seat is fitted. The trouble is, I will have spent a lot of money by then & I don't really want to go down the road of removing all the good bits for the test & putting them back the day after. By the way, no one ever goes in the back!

[mk1coopers]

Here is the link to the seat section of the testers manual, the whole manual is available online or to download

http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/m4s06000201.htm

[Lord Croker]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply & for the information. Looks like the seat will be ok, next I have to get the speedo which has been dormant for 15 years, working again!

[pad4]

speedo doesnt work in my rally car and it passed its MOT ( if the laaw are reading this, speed is monitered by my terratrip so there !)

pad

[mk1]

There has never been a requirement for a working speedo. You are required to have a method of measuring speed, but this can (in theory) be done using a rev counter.

[coop12g295]

My favourite speedo tale was a mate of mine who had a green lane/trail bike
who got pulled over and told he needed a speedo and to not have one was
an offence.He duly lifted the seat showed said speedo and pointed out that
just because the regs said it had to be on the machine didn't mean you had
to be able to see it. Sent on his way by a disgruntled officer

[contour51]

Just a bit of lateral thinking regarding the seat issue.
If the seat will not tip forward enough to allow any rear seat passengers to get in,in the 1st place,what would the "escape" problem be
Gareth

[mk1coopers]

New rules about speedo's now, (no section about being over a certain age or size and not wearing them though )

http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/m4s06000701.htm

[Lord Croker]

Thanks guys for all your replies, Gareth, I have exactly the same opinion as you, what can't get in the back won't need to escape, but the European regulators don't see it that way.
Pad, The speedo in my rally car never worked either, but as Mark said, for the MOT they always accepted the rev counter as an indication.
Mk1coopers the thought of me wearing speedo's is horrifying & would certainly frighten children & animals!
This is where my information first came from: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... S1zPgfsj7Q

[mk1coopers]

Here's the link for the home page on the VOSA site,

http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/index.htm

The manual is useful as its exactly the same one testers use, so at least if you get a fail you can double check the rules, or read up before you go for the test if you at unsure about something. With the seats the way I read it is that if it is designed to move forwards and backwards then it should, however if it's a different seat and it's designed to be fixed in one place it can't fail for not moving!, as for it tipping or not, again I don't consider the tipping function to be part of the checks, as long as the seat locks in the upright position, and moves if it's designed to it's a pass