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Hi all, For those that don't know my car was sva'ed yesterday and as expected it failed! But I needed a list to work towards and now have that.
It's failure points were things from wrong nuts used to more tie clips needed which have all been rectified now.
The main failure points which I was very dissapointed in were as follows
1. The lotus elise seat seatbelt mounting points he thought were inadequate. no big deal as I can just change to the chassis points for the retest.
2. The chassis itself was not substantial enough to mount the seats too?
The way I have them mounted is straight through the chassis rails which are all sleeved and high tensile bolts and nuts
What I have to do to rectify, all the sleeves must be welded top and bottom and under the car I must fit 100mm x100mm steel spreader plates to strenghten the chassis. Again not difficult but time consuming.
And lastly was the handbrake! there was no adjustment left too account for pad wear, suggested that I move all the mounting points for the handbrake further down the tunnel which is not practical so I will have to have a play with this.
Thats it! so all the points will be sorted by next week as I'm away this week and only have the last three to do!
The examiner let me calibrate my speedo and lights after the test which was a bonus!
The car behaved itself all day apart from the rear brakes binding on while driving home and this needs sorting as 5th and 6th gear would not pull it got that bad, rears were white hot and smoking when I got home even though I stopped 4 times.
The car is quick and very loud! ha much quicker than the rovers ha
I thought about the pad wear comment after you mentioned it yesterday. The thought that fired around my head, is that I’ve never had to adjust a handbrake cable to account for pad wear, as on a drum a ratchet system continually adjusts to account for wear, and likewise on a disc equipped car, the self adjuster compensates. The only time I’ve had to adjust a handbrake, was when a new cable was fitted, and it was stretching initially – that was all dealt with in the first week of fitting the new cable. If I’m not mistaken, on a standard disc handbrake, it’s important the handbrake levers on the callipers return to the set-back position when the handbrake is released, else the self adjuster doesn’t work properly.
If the judgement of the seat mountings is subjective it may be proudent to add the strenghtning. For me John has tested the Taunton SVA center and they did not pick up on the same issue, did you add anything to your seat mounting John?
As you say you now have a target list and a clear path to the certificate.
Do you have a work shop diagram of your hand brake assembly? On the BMW one in my Sportster there is an adjuster inside that compensates for wear - you adjust it through one of the wheel bolt holes. I had to show then the manual with the diagram at the SVA test which was good enough for them.
From talking to Craig, the issue with his car’s seats and belts was two fold. Firstly they didn’t like the seat attachment to the chassis, and I suspect this dislike was exaggerated by the lotus seats also being the anchorage points for the seat belts.
That they stated they would fail the lotus seats if they did the type-approval seems ridiculous, as from my limited understanding, when a car is type approved the load testing of the seats and seat-belt system is far more onerous and objective than the opinion of a VOSA tester.
My seats although fundamentally the same as Craig’s, are installed differently. I welded in additional longitudinal tubes, with captive (welded) nuts to which the seats are bolted. The examiner said “they pass as the installation is as the type approved installation” (or words to that effect). He did say that had I not reinforced the roll bar anchorage he would have failed that.
Talking of my car, with a bit of luck I’ll get it back on Monday. Hurrah.
