NCT - Not Orange Enough

[Bank Manager]

Have 02 Galaxy - NCT arranged at their request last week. Failed - due to the fact that the rear indicators were not orange enough (indicator glass on the Galaxy is clear not colured glass, hence the orange bulbs). Visual fail - that means if I replaced them with suitably orange bulbs, car would pass on a visual inspection (no further payment would need to be made by me).

Went to local motorfactor, with one of the offending bulbs in hand albeit:- a) it looked plenty orange to me and b) based on my own visual inspection, my lights were as orange as anything else on the road.

Motorfactor produces two new bulbs, which he and I concluded were no more orange than the one I had in my hand. His only solution was to sell me amber paint, to paint the bulbs I already had, but suggested that before I'd use same I should bring car back to NCT with existing bulbs to see if it would pass.

I took his advice, back to NCT Centre - same car - same bulbs.

Quick visual inspection by NCT employee, confirmed that car would now pass as new bulbs were significantly better than previous ones (I hadn't indicated that I had inserted new bulbs, all I indicated was that the car had failed last week, due to 'orangeless' bulbs). Within minutes the computer had produced revised printout of test and NCT Cert itself.
(Didn't say anything there, in case my cert would be withdrawn).

Went back to motorfactor, to whom I returned the amber paint and thanked him for his valuable advice.

NCT - my This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language!

 

[ajapale]

Re: NCT - a con ?

I too felt like David Trimble because I was not orange enough! When I asked the guy in the NCT he said that they see some lights that are hardly orange at all and that this is a problem. The difficulty lies with making a judgement as to whats not orange enough.

aj

 

[daithi]

Maybe the NCT should specify what exactly consitutes "sufficient orangeness" in terms of a quantifiable perameter such as wavelength-what happens if your local NCT tester is colourblind???!..daithi

 

[ashambles]

Wonder if the initial test was done outside like the follow up test probably was would the car have failed, the colour will probably look a little different in artificial light and natural light.

 

[MonsieurBond]

Wonder if the initial test was done outside like the follow up test probably was would the car have failed, the colour will probably look a little different in artificial light and natural light.

I thought you could now query an NCT fail result to the AA or something?

This one sounds a bit subjective to me.

 

[Guest127]

i know someone who also was advised to change the side indicator lights as they were white. they were the original ones on the car for the past 4 years. if its legal to sell a car with white side indicators ( the ones on the sides of the front wings )then how comes 4 years later it unacceptable to drive around with them. could it be the good old government are quite happy to reap hugh taxes of new cars and then screw the motorist again 4 years later?

 

[Carmageddon!]

A very similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago, my front indicator lens are clear and the bulbs are supposed to be orange but they are only available as clear bulbs in this country so I had to wrap one of them in orange tape. It's slightly different from the other front indicator, but whatever. Anyway, the NCT tester guy told me that he had to fail it because it wasn't orange enough. I politely requested if he could define what exactly is orange enough. He basically tried to fob me off, so I demanded to speak to a supervisor and after a few minutes arguing my case they relented and passed my car. They didn't say a thing when I got it tested again this year.