How to get your car MOT ready

Firstly, it’s worth noting that an MOT (stands for Ministry of Transport, which introduced the test back in 1960) is a test of your car’s roadworthiness, centred around the safety of you and other road users. A pass is not necessarily a reflection of the mechanical health of your vehicle, so it’s still important to keep up with the maintenance and servicing of other areas of your car that aren’t covered under an MOT. All cars more than three years old must pass a yearly MOT to be legal to drive on the road in the UK.

Some heavy hits during an MOT are unavoidable – they are simply issues you have to ask your garage to address. Others, however, are things you can address quite easily beforehand, and you can make the most of the wide range of parts available on eBay.

We’ll have a look at these first before going through the more involved stuff that it’s still worth investigating and perhaps asking your mechanic to sort – even doing a pre-MOT – ahead of MOT day. But even if there are issues that you have to get your garage to sort, you can still get the parts in via eBay, at great prices.

Lights

Your lights are the easiest possible things to check given it’s usually quite obvious when they’re not working. They’re also the most common point of failure on MOTs, according to the RAC.

Switch on your side lights, dipped beams and headlights and wander round the car to make sure everything is working as it should. It’s also important that the adjuster for the beam of your headlights is working and that the lenses are clear for enough light to make it out of them. Your lights may be working but a surprising number of cars will fail their MOT because of broken adjusters – often thanks to plastic that goes brittle over time and breaks – or because hazy lenses mean not enough light gets through.

Check the indicators and hazards – remembering most cars will have blinkers on the wing or in the wing mirror too. Reverse and brake lights might require an assistant, or a decent shop window reflection. People also often forget that rear number plates have their own lights too, which need to be working to pass an MOT.

Any and all new parts for your lights – from the bulbs to the units themselves, will be easy to search for and purchase with eBay - you can simply enter your reg to find the parts that fit your vehicle and you’re backed by eBay Assured Fit, so if the eligible part doesn’t fit, you can return it for free within 30 days.

Dashboard warning lights

Another thing that’s nice and easy to check is if there are faults appearing on your dashboard, as the car is literally telling you something is wrong. No, the little symbols on the dashboard aren’t exactly clear – if you’re lucky, with a more modern car, a description will be available either in your cluster screen or in the infotainment.

Even if not, you can investigate these faults further with an OBD2 reader. This affordable little gadget can be plugged into your car – every car has an easily accessible OBD port – and give you details on what’s wrong, or give you a fault code you can research.

Will it reveal issues you can easily fix yourself? Probably not. But you’ll be able to shop for parts on eBay to take to your garage. It could also save you an hour’s labour given the garage can skip the diagnosis part and go straight to remedying the issue with the part you provided.

Windscreen and wipers

It may sound obvious but it is crucial to your safety and that of other road users, that you can effectively see out of your car, mostly through the windscreen of course but through the other windows too. As such you won’t be surprised to read that a nice big crack across your windscreen will be a failure when it comes to MOT time, as will big-enough chips and cracks that encroach into your line of vision.

Easier to sort for yourself will be the wipers, which must be effective in cleaning your windscreen of dirt, debris and water. It’s frustrating but even relatively new wipers can ‘go bad’ with the rubber prone to perishing over time in the sun. Once the rubber has degraded it will reduce their effectiveness.

Luckily, finding wipers is easier with eBay where you can find the right windscreen wipers to fit for your car. Be sure to check your rear wiper if you have one, too, as well as how effective your washer jets are. The difference between an MOT pass and fail can be as little as making sure your washer fluid is topped up.

Tyres

Your tyres are one of the most important parts of your car in terms of safety, as they are where the car actually touches the road. It’s easy to feel when their performance is dropping off and they are easy to inspect. You should be checking your tyres are healthy more regularly than the annual MOT test, too.

Minimum tread depth for tyres is 1.6mm across the central three quarters of the contact surface, which you can test using a 20p coin. Pop it in the tread and if you can see the outer band of the coin your tread is too low. Have a feel all the way across the tyre for any wear you can’t see, too. It’s not just tread, either. Over time tyres perish and crack and this will be evident in the sidewall.

How to pick the right tyres for your car

A tyre can be an MOT failure with maximum tread too, if there’s other forms of damage such as rips, tears, blisters or punctures. A pothole for instance won’t always burst your tyre. Sometimes they leave bulges or lacerations.

The easiest thing of all to check will be the age of your tyre, with four digits just above where the wheel begins denoting the week of production and the year of manufacture. 4817 for instance, means the tyre was made in the 48th week of 2017 and incidentally, that would mean they’re pretty old in 2024. There aren’t absolute rules on this but signs of age-related tyre issues are generally expected after around five years.

You can shop for tyres on eBay and even get them fitted using their tyre fitting service.

Suspension and driveshafts

While you’re out on your drive to check your brakes, you can also be listening for untoward clunks or noises from the suspension that could suggest excess wear or a breakage.

Much like your brakes it’s also relatively easy to check your suspension components. Check the springs for cracks, the dampers for weeping and leaks, and the rubber bushings in the suspension and steering links for wear. These bushings are designed to allow some movement – adding to a car’s compliance over rough surfaces – but too much movement caused by obvious breaks or perishing in the rubber will need to be addressed.

Likewise check your car’s drive shafts – they’ll be at the front for FWD cars and at the rear for RWD cars. Where these go into the wheel hub there’s a rubber boot that has grease within which can sometimes tear and leak. This will be an MOT failure and, as such, making sure your drive shaft boots are in good condition is a good call.

Battery

Another quick one that shouldn’t take long at all is to check over your car battery. Firstly, the battery itself should be firmly in place, and properly secured with brackets that are in good condition. Then check the battery connectors for any looseness, they should be tight and firmly clipped in place.

A battery with any signs of fluid leakage will result in a failed MOT, so keep an eye out for that, too, and it’s best to replace a damaged battery as soon as possible rather than waiting for a mechanic to make the discovery.

How to change your car battery

Oil, coolant, brake fluid and more

This is something people should do more often anyway but at MOT time a healthier, happier engine is more likely to pass the emissions test. So check your oil levels are correct, check your coolant levels are up, check your brake fluid reservoir looks healthy. All of these should be accessible from under the bonnet and in the case of brake fluid and coolant, have reservoirs with min/max indicators on them. In an ideal world, your car’s yearly service will be timed to be a month before the MOT…

So those are our check points to prepare your car for MOT. Even if you’re new to car maintenance, it’s possible to at least get ahead of the issues and diagnose things. If you can go to your mechanic and even just say you’ve heard a clunk from your driver’s side front suspension, that’s better than going into the MOT blind and getting a call at the end of the day saying your car won’t be back with you for another two or three days. And with eBay you can get your car MOT ready ahead of time, with an extensive range of parts at great prices.

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