Bully9

AFAICS they are basing the idea of contamination purely on the fact that the fluid is blue. On the side of the tin it says not to be used on road vehicles "due to non-conforming color". The spelling of color suggests to me that the non-conforming might be with U.S. regulations although the fluid is a German product. Some clarification would be useful if anyone here knows - i can't find any on google (surprise, surprise).

Rich - I wouldn't really say in a range of 9-13 notches that 11 is close to the limit - it's as far as it can possibly be from either the lower or upper limit. And i think you missed my attempt at humour on the question of the refund: the test was free :-)

Anyway, thanks for your input. I'm going to go to my local VOSA centre and then Halfords again today to see if they can provide some detail. As you may imagine, I wasn't in the best frame of mind when they failed the car yesterday.

Bully9

Edit: Actually i owe Halfords something of an apology. I spoke to the guy at VOSA and he was friendly and helpful but didn't really add anything tangible, so i went back to Halfords and spoke to the assistant i saw yesterday (the tester was off today). He apparently tracks a car and knew all about the blue racing brake fluid. Apparently you can still buy the same fluid but it's no longer blue. They've removed the colouring because it didn't conform to road standards which amounted to 'contamination'. A little over-zealous perhaps, but difficult to argue.

On the handbrake question, i showed him the screenshot and he said that it was an unusually long travel, saying that 6 or so clicks was normal. But he totally accepted the evidence and said to bring it with me when i returned the car for a retest. I asked him how much it would cost and he said it would be free. So quite a prod in the eye for me and any others who had taken a rather cynical view.

Right, time to jack up the car...

mtunreal

Colour and it is observed. Amber is the only colour allowable, discolouration will be considered contamination. Hence why super blue has gone away from major sales.

ROB1980

richmc

Believe Rob he knows what he's talking about! I had a skip through the brakes section of the MOT, there is no mention of colour. The only indication of possible contamination is poor tested brake performance, did they say the brakes performed poorly? if not then it's no fail.

As for the handbrake, as I said almost is NOT a fail, what if he said he was going to fail it because he thought an indicator bulb was about to blow?

I did get the irony of not paying for the MOT, just proves that you do indeed get what you pay for.

richmc

Difficult to get a prod in the eye, when you have the wool pulled over them!

Nottm_S2

We can speculate but that brake fluid warrants changing and the handbrake probably warrants an adjustment too

We should all maintain these cars properly

mtunreal

True it doesn't dictate colour, but 99% of fluid is amber (and this is what 99% of testers will be used to and know). If the colour of the fluid is observable in the reservoir, which in this case it is and would be blue, the tester would fail it. It would look contaminated. Under the new guidelines for the 2018 test, brake fluid contamination is checked.

ROB1980

Bully9

Nice one. However, my point is: it wasn't :-)

ATE TYPE 200 Brake Fluid not Super Blue - Unfortunately due to EU & US law brake fluid can no longer be supplied in blue. This ATE Type 200 is the same spec as the "Super Blue" but amber in colour to meet the new rules.

More here

This is pretty much what the guy told me. Whether the colouring additive amounts to 'contamination' could be argued either way. I'm not saying Rob or anyone else here is wrong - or right for that matter - just that the fail i got was not gratuitous as i first suspected.