17-05-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Daily Mirror
Car repaired with tape and sticks fails NCT at Irish test centre
A car recently undergoing a NCT inspection failed after its undercarriage revealed an interesting example of DIY repair.
Upon raising the car to perform a closer inspection of its underside, mechanics discovered a section of its anti-roll bar - a component designed to reduce body roll while cornering - had been hastily repaired with a thin stick and a handful of gaffer tape.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the car was failed on the spot for its imaginative (if unsafe) methods of repair. Its owner was ordered to remove the car and present it for retesting at a later date, reports Cork Beo.
Anti-roll bars are essential to a car's safety profile. As well as improving general handling, the bar prevents the axle from moving too far away from the body. This stiffness provided by the bar helps to lower a car's overall centre of gravity, increasing stability.
This stiffness makes the car far less likely to suffer a loss of control when cornering at speed - and prevents taller cars, such as vans and SUVs, from rolling over in the event of an accident.
Anti-roll bars first hit the automotive mainstream in the 1990s, with Citroen's revolutionary Xantia Activa among the first to include the feature as standard. Since then, they've been imperative to saving lives - and NCT inspectors don't take kindly to badly-bodged examples.
The NCT body has declined to name which centre the car had been presented to - apart from saying that the premises was located in the south of Ireland.
However, it seems that inspectors managed to see the humorous side of such an incident, posting about the vehicle on the internet.
