I trundled off to the laptop to get some prices, again my brain decided to engage, "wasn't my MOT around about now?" it prompted me. I searched out the papers from last year and scanned for the retest date, '21/03/2014'. What's the date today then '16/03/2014'. Arse. With no one at home during the week there was no time to order some from the internet, I kindly asked my Dad to go to Selecta Tyre and order some in for me, quick smart. I decided to go with the Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2's I got last year, (you can read the reasoning behind this choice by following the previous link). He did good with the haggling on the price, they matched camskill.co.uk's offering and the fitting cost I had paid last year, which totalled £333.28. Not exactly a nice figure to pay out but good value at least.
I, luckily, managed to get a slot before the MOT ran out to get the tyres fitted, and according to the receipt they had been nitrogen filled too (I hadn't asked for this). It'll be interesting to see how that effects wear and performance. Speaking of wear, you're probably interested to know how the tyres lasted. Well, I had the first set fitted at 144,434 miles in March 2013, and just had them replaced at 158,892 March 2014. You could probably knock 1,000 miles off as they were down to the wear indicators and probably should have been replaced earlier. So, all things taken into account they are good for 13,500 miles. Not too shabby considering the pretty impressive all round performance they give, I'd still highly recommend them, evidence of that is me putting my money where my mouth is and ordering another two. When the fronts wear down they will be replaced with the same also. It's worth noting that the fronts were changed at exactly the same time as the rears and there is still a good 3 - 4 mm left before the wear indicators.
Anyway, I digress, back on track. I booked my MOT for a last minute 'sh&! or bust' effort at passing on the day it was to run out. With hardly any time to prepare I was flapping more than that infamous bird of iPhone fame, especially as I was going on a Mountain biking trip the next day.
Nevertheless the day arrived and I pulled the car into the test centre and headed inside for the long, agonising wait. The wait was made even more painful after I saw my car had been finished, pulled out of the garage to the car park but still no word from the mechanics. I heard a lot of printing going on so I was expecting to carry home an encyclopaedia of all known MOT failures. Around three weeks later the fella called me over, still printing, he mumbled "your car's done mate, no problems at all".
YUS! Not bad for a car that has just ticked over 160,000 miles.
