THE BUILD

The S.V.A. Test

LINKS

The Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) test is required for any kit car build, or any imported car from outside the EC. The test covers a range of areas including basic construction, brakes, lights, steering, emissions, noise, plus other stuff relating to safety.

Generally the Tiger kit should be SVA compliant if you follow Tiger's advice, but there are some areas where the SVA test has moved on and Tiger haven't caught up plus some areas where the CAT and/or the parts are weak.

 

SVA Preparation: Bits and bobs I did before the test:

  • 5mm dia. Beading around the cycle wings.
  • Big U-trim around light brackets
  • Plastic bolt covers on all visible nut and bolt heads.
  • Plastic conduit with rubber gaitors (made from cycle inner tube) over the track rods to cover track rod end nuts and look professional.
  • Label brake warning light ( ! ) (I did this with a letraset)
  • Wire handbrake switch and brake reservoir switch in parallel
  • Check handbrake travel
  • Cover lower part of cycle wing stays with rubber (old bike inner tube) to cover mounting bolts.
  • Check rear foglight is vertical

 

 

 

SVA Application: Luckily I live very close to a SVA test station, I went along and collected the form to apply. The form isn't written for kit cars so some of the questions don't make a great deal of sense and some you have to make an educated guess at....ie. "what is the maximum speed?" (very fast?)

Fill this in and send it off to Swansea, eventually you get a date back from them.... but probably not the one you wanted.

Whilst you are in the form filling mood, its a good idea to get round to the DVLA office and get a head start on the registration. More forms to fill in and they arrange for someone to come round and inspect the car to check the engine and chassis number are what you say they are. In the Yorkshire area this seems to be off loaded onto the local Police...who really could do without this hassle, so it takes ages for them to do this. I think they'd be better employed chasing the B&ST&$D$ who steal cars and let the DVLA do their own checking.... but eventually they came and inspected my Tiger, so as soon as the SVA & MOT pass certificates are in my hand I can be registered ASAP.

 

The Test Day: 5th September, my dad came over as support for the day. The Test was booked at Beverley for 8am. As its only just down the road from me this wasn't too early a start.

The tester was pretty helpful chap, he was a bit picky here and there but equally gave me the benefit of the doubt in other areas. Here is the result:

 

  • Edges: - Fail...... missed a couple of nuts, inner edge of the rear wheel arch not radiused. Exhaust end not a rolled end. These were fixed by adding a Halfords Chrome tail pipe end to the exhaust, adding a bit of P-trim to the rear arches and making a large nut cover for the front upright bolts. This large nut cover was made from a cut down mountain bike handle bar grip, the rest of the grip made the bonnet catch cover.
  • Emissions: Fail ........ way too rich. You could smell it was wrong so not a surprise (my friends can testify to this from standing behind it in the garage). This was fixed at the MOT
  • Noise: Pass....101dB against limit of 102dB
  • Brakes efficiency and balance: Pass .... even though we had to tighten a leaking union on the day
  • Lights: Fail.... Dip beam not working. Rear fog light 5mm too low! The dip beam problem was down to bad crimp connection. The fog lamp height was initially set when the car was just let down off the jack so the suspension was sitting high hence the error, easy fix to adjust the bracket.
  • Mirrors: Fail.... No central mirror and wing mirrors too low to give enough field of view over the rear wings. I knew the mirrors were marginal and I was not sure about needed a centre mirror or not so, again, not a surprise. The fixes were to add a central mirror and some wing mirrors on stalks to give more height. I fitted the Sierra mirror on a pole and bought some SPA Design mirrors.
  • Steering: Fail.... No self centring, and a wire was resting on the column that needed cable tying. The self centring problem was evident on the drive there, a common problem on CAT's. This was fixed by giving the car as much castor angle as possible by adding washes behind the TCA.
  • Hand Brake: Fail.... Worked OK but as it operated the cable just touched one of the brake pipe flexis. I would never have spotted this one. The fix was to re-route the flexi pipe the other side of the handbrake and rotate it slightly.
  • Construction: Fail.... Tank straps had twisted slightly as they were tightened so it failed. Pipe work, electric work and everything else were fine. The fix was new straps, my dad got hold of some professional straps normally used for holding compressed air tanks to trucks.
  • Seat belts: Fail.... The seat belts and mounting were fine, but the top of the belt bolts to the roll bar which is bolted to the chassis. One of these bolts was not marked "8.8" tensile strength so failed. The fix was to simply switch the bolts for 8.8 ones.

Not a disaster, but one or too things I should have picked up before if time had allowed.

  

The MOT and SVA fixes:

Once you have failed an SVA you are then allowed to drive the car (without plates & tax of course) to a garage for an MOT or to do work to correct the SVA fail points.... it doesn't say how near or far this garage can be :-)

My dad is a retired garage manager, he had a word with his old firm who very kindly allowed us some workshop space and the use of their gas analyser for a morning. We also booked the Tiger in for an MOT in the afternoon. The good news was its 55 miles from my house to the garage.... the Tiger gets its first real miles in

At the garage we got the car hooked up to the gas analyser. The fitter, Eddy, sorted the carbs out for me in a few minutes. I had another go at setting the carbs myself the day before and had now gone the other way, it was too lean with the CO down but the HC up. Eddy soon had it looking good.

Next job was the tracking. I had done this back at home with a bit of an adhoc method of drawing lines on the garage floor and a bit of guess work. As it turned out I wasn't a million miles out. We used the professional equipment to adjust the toe in spot on. After this was done we looked at the steering self centre problem. It needed more castor to correct this one, so we added washers behind the TCA, pushing the pivot point forward and so, hopefully, increasing the castor angle. It seemed to work, but still not huge amounts of self centring.

The MOT was in the afternoon, and all went well and I came away with a certificate....and a big grin.

 

SVA Re-Test: 3rd of October was re-test day. Luckily it was a nice sunny day, great day out for a Tiger! all points bar 1 passed, but it still failed on wing mirror visibility. This time it was very marginal, but I had to agree to the letter of the test it did, in fact, fail. The examiner also noticed that he had missed a failure point the first time round (the front indicators were too low) but let me off that one as it was his fault. Would he have given me the benefit of the doubt regarding my marginal mirrors if he hadn't have spotted the indicator fail?? The good news was that they would not charge me for the re-test as it would only be a 5 minute job.

At the test centre there was a Robin Hood in for a retest. For a RH it didn't look too bad, they usually look very Blue Peter-ish to me, but the guy had take 6 years over it! It did look a bit of a barge at the side of the Tiger, I think you could go off roading in one the ground clearance is so high.... but you pays yer money yer etc etc.

A guy had just finished his SVA test with his Locost when I got there, he was saying a friend of his failed SVA on steering self centring in a MK (a tiger favourite problem), the fix he used was springs under the gaiters on the steering rack as well as getting as much castor and toe in as possible.... something to remember if anyone gets desperate.

 

HOME aaaaaaaaaaTHE BUILD aaaaaaaaaaLINKS