Hi
Chapter & Verse, sorry
I accompanied a friend of mine to SVA about 3 weeks ago now, with a Subaru based Murtaya kit (£20K+).
We'd spent 4 days solid over the Easter weekend getting bits done, but it was clear (to me anyway, owner was in denial
) the car wasn't going to be fully "presentable".
The rebuilt 350BHP engine ran for the first time & the car drove out of the garage on the Monday, SVA on the Wed.
We also fried part of the loom & had a small fire on the Monday evening, as we hadn't properly earthed the starter (it was accidentally insulated & dumping the current down an ECU earth, ouch). 1 am to trace it out & rectify.
The car was submitted unpainted (edges knocked off), with engine, transmission, brakes & suspension fitted, all lights in & working. But no screen, wipers (& no centre mirror), no heater, one seat, one belt, no door glass, no locks, no dash, no trim (you get the idea).
The killer was that the car decided the engine wasn't going to run on the day of the test, so we pushed it on the trailer & set off. After the test we found out this was due to the new ECU startup map being too rich & flooding it.
For us, the plan was to get into SVA rather than IVA.
The SVA tester (same guy that tested my Stylus in '02) was very helpful & we were realistic.
He'd actually been told no holiday or sickies during April as VOSA were expecting a lot of cars to be put through like this.
In reality most people weren't turning up so he was having easy days & they were losing SVA fee & stuck with IVA.
We told him up front we didn't expect to pass & the engine wasn't running.
So the car was pushed through the test lane & an arbituary test carried out, including brake test.
Whilst going through we talked about what we were intending to do & how IVA compared.
Basically the finished car would go through SVA no problem, IVA with a couple of mods.
The main one I remember was the rear wheel arches.
SVA talks about the wheel "rim" being inside the arch, the tyre could protrude.
IVA now includes the rim & the tyre for set angles when view from the side.
The Murtaya would fail as the tyre sticks out viewed from the rear, easily fixed with rubber wheel flaps.
Another one was that all dash warning lights had to carry the approved emblem relating to function.
ie no plain coloured bulbs & no "LIGHTS" text labels, both would fail.
Similar comment about E-marked exterior lights (Fog light specifically mentioned)
We ended up with a 20 point fail list, with some very general "edges in the cockpit" type notes.
But we now have until October to resubmit the car as an SVA retest.
Pressure off until last night, when he told me he'd booked the car on a trackday at Spa in July & wants to drive it there !
Anyway, the test is not too different, just more £££ for the treasury.
Matt
