Would a rusty car be illegal to drive

[waynne]

I was wondering where the law stands on rusty cars and what the guidelines are for them being safe to drive?

I suppose surface rust is acceptable but what about door bottoms that have started to rust away? Can this jagged edge be covered with elephant tape or does it need to be more permenant?

(Don't worry it's not my car, a friend has picked up an old project Beetle to work on and I don't think it's safe to drive myself, the sills are pretty rotton and it doesn't have an MOT either.)

[stamford]

I believe such rusty parts are an MOT failure these days. Surface rust is one thing but a lack of metal and jagged edges is another. It the Beetle doesn't have an MOT then why would they be driving it anyway? If it was going to a pre-arranged MOT test it would fail on what you have described no question.

[xavier]

It would really need to be trailored away and worked on. If there are sharp edges this is a problem. If the edges are rusty but not sharp he will probably be ok but I dont think you can drive a car on the road without an MOT unless it is going to the MOT test itself.

[MasterAuron]

Jagged edges and excessive corrosion within so much of seatbelt mounting points are failures AFAIK.

[MickieH]

Too much corrosion around load bearing areas such as suspension struts and mounting points are fails, same as seat belt anchor points as mentioned.

It's always looked at from a safety point of view.

If it's got sharp/jagged edges consider if it would injure someone if they were caught by it - if so it would fail.

This sounds like a project car so shouldn't be driven in the condition you're describing anyway, and I personally wouldn't submit a car for an MOT in that state.

The tester can take into account the vehicles overall condition and if they consider it unsafe, it will fail.

The practice of using duct tape to cover holes and cracks in bumpers, etc seems to do the trick, but not sure what they would think on a rusty door.
If the door skin has seperated from the door itself, then I expect that would fail too.

[jarrus]

Well, recently my mate failed his mot on his escort because one of the rear chassis mounting points was corroded excessively, and his sills also.

I have some rust on my front wing (crap insurance botch up that never got undersealed by them) and has never failed an mot on it..