Hi guys. I am planning to fit some sort of racing steering wheel to my 1998 Roadster RS, not exactly sure which one but i know it wont have a air bag. My question is will the car pass MOT if the car had an airbag standard? If not, why exactly wont it pass and is there a way around it? In the mean time i am going to disconnect the airbags as the car is mainly used for lanes rallies here in Northern Ireland and there was a co=driver injured by an exploding airbag over a bad bump.
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If there is an airbag light on it will fail an MOT.
If the car had an airbag fitted as standard and that is missing and the tester notices the fact it will fail an MOT.
The reason it will not pass is that the MOT testers manual tells the tester to fail the car if any of the above faults are found, there is no allowance for rally drivers that do not like air bags!
See here
http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/htdocs/m4s05000401.htm
With regards to your reason that someone was injured by an air bag, there have been lots of people killed in motor sport and lots more killed by speeding on the road so that would using your logic kake you stop motor sport and driving above say 15mph.
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I believed there were specific exemptions for competition vehicles.
Bottom line however I have certainly had cars pass that were originally fitted 20th air bags and no longer have them fitted.
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I believe that most MOT testers have a reasonableness factor built in and do not look at the rule book every time.
I reckon as you imply a missing air bag while a book failure may not make it a failure in the MOT man’s mind most days.
Nick
Where in te MOT testing manual do you believe the exemptions are noted for competion vehicles, not in the ones I read
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In the introduction, page 9 section 5, headed Modified Vehicles.
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This is the page that Robbie refers to
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Reading the above the airbags can be removed if the vehicle is fitted with 4 point harness also u might wanna put a sticker on the passenger side airbag warning of the airbag being disconnected
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Cheers. If all goes to plan seats and harnesses will be in before the steering wheel anyway so alls good then???
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