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My car is a 5 1/2 years old Nissan Note with 42k miles on it. It has only driven 6000 miles since its last MOT. It is serviced every year.

I recently took my car to get 2 new tyres and asked for the tracking to be checked at same time.

The garage struggled with my tracking. They had 3 mechanics trying to sort it out so a correct reading could be taken/recorded. It took them approximately 40 minutes. The manager spoke to me advising they were having problems, but that they would sort it out.

I specifically asked the manager:

What would cause these issues?

Was there a broken part or something that needed to be repaired?

If a repair was needed, I would have left the car for the repair that day. They said that it was probably the state of our roads that had caused the problem.

I advised them that my MOT was due exactly a week later (being done by same garage) and I asked:

Will my car would fail due to whatever the problem was with my tracking?

The manager said my car would not fail the MOT and that there was nothing wrong with my car.

My car failed the MOT with a broken coil spring!

I have no problem with it needing the repair as I presume this is a wear & tear issue.

But,

  1. Should the mechanics/manager not realised that there was a problem with my car?
  2. Could this have caused a lot more problems with my car if we continued to drive it?
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A spring can break at any time and it's quite a common fault. The fact that this wasn't spotted when the workshops were unable to obtain acceptable suspension geometry settings is a cause for concern and I'd personally be thankful that it didn't cause an incident and re-evaluate my choice of workshops in future.

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