im thinking of buying a new back box for my car but ive heard rumors that your car can fail MOT if it doesnt have the standard system or it exceeds a certain decibel limit? or even in some cases get pulled by the cops?
does anyone here have any first hand experiences with this? have you failed an MOT for a noisy exhaust?
would be helpful to find out what this law is. Theres some places saying its illegal and some places saying its perfectly fine.
[QUOTE=kinki-bunni;41749609]im thinking of buying a new back box for my car but ive heard rumors that your car can fail MOT if it doesnt have the standard system or it exceeds a certain decibel limit? or even in some cases get pulled by the cops?
does anyone here have any first hand experiences with this? have you failed an MOT for a noisy exhaust?
would be helpful to find out what this law is. Theres some places saying its illegal and some places saying its perfectly fine.[/QUOTE]
There is I believe a limit on noise emissions in decibels, being over that will fail an MOT or VOSA could potentially pull you over for it (they're around a lot more than they used to be this past year or so, they drive vehicles that look like highway agency cars) although I think that's fairly unlikely, they're more interested in pikey vans and unsafe lorries/minibuses generally.
If you did get pulled over by VOSA since it's not unsafe you'd probably just get a notice ordering you to rectify the problem, although it'd be difficult for them to prove on the spot I suspect.
[editline]7th August 2013[/editline]
If in doubt, contact VOSA anyway, they will know the answer.
[editline]7th August 2013[/editline]
A bit of further reading seems to imply production cars are tested by the government for their noise emissions when they are released (at the same time they do co2 emissions tests to work out what tax you should be paying) and the limit is a vague "not excessively louder than it was as it rolled off the factory line" pretty much.
Keep your old exhaust system and swap it out for the MOT if it fails. Most MOT garages don't care as there's no money for them to make by failing you for noise, just don't take it to a super professional one. Source: I have a straight-through exhaust system (diesel, legal) and just passed an MOT.
[QUOTE=kinki-bunni;41749609]im thinking of buying a new back box for my car but ive heard rumors that your car can fail MOT if it doesnt have the standard system or it exceeds a certain decibel limit? or even in some cases get pulled by the cops?
does anyone here have any first hand experiences with this? have you failed an MOT for a noisy exhaust?
would be helpful to find out what this law is. Theres some places saying its illegal and some places saying its perfectly fine.[/QUOTE]
You generally should be okay in terms of loudness as long as its not stupidly loud, you can fit a non standard exhaust and it will pass an MOT fine, unless you fit a decat exhaust system (i.e there is no catalytic converter to reduce emissions), obviously this will make the emissions rise which is the reason it will fail.
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