Air suspension legality issue

Avocet1 said:

The only thing I'd urge caution on, is that the Rebuilt and Radically altered "rules" are actually DVLA guidelines, rather than law. They're not very good, to be honest - and hopelessly out of date. There's a link here:

https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-registration/radically-altered-vehicles

but DVLA are really only concerned with the identity of the vehicle. I've had this out with them plenty of times over the years, but they're a pretty non-technical bunch (and I think that quite suits most of us!) so there's little to be gained from pushing this. The link above, takes you to another link called "road vehicle regulations" which, in turn, takes you to the Construction & Use regs (but laughably, the 1986 original regs, rather than how they are today). I think there have been about 200 amendments since then, so that version is worse than useless!

If you're going to modify a car, download the IVA Inspection manual for M1 vehicles:

https://assets.publishing.service.g...oval-inspection-manual-passenger-vehicles.pdf

and work to those. Again, they are NOT "law" but if you work to those, you'll at least be in with half a chance of satisfying the C&U and the Lighting regs!

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Avocet1 said:

Hi Stan, thanks for asking! Sadly, not too good, I'm afraid. It hasn't improved much since the last operation and they're out of ideas now. There's talk of early retirement on ill health grounds, which has got her a bit down-in-the-dumps. She's coming to terms with the fact that she's probably treated her last patient. Of course, she'd be free to take up some other job that didn't involve her being on her feet for long periods, but we'll see how it goes. She's off the crutches and can walk (relatively slowly) a couple of miles on level ground, but still needs some pretty "industrial" pain killers.

Covid is making IVA a nightmare, by the way! DVSA are operating with reduced numbers of staff so getting test appointments is really difficult. They're operating a priority system, so ambulances and goods vehicles used for transporting food or medicines are the top two priorities. Everyone else has to fight for whatever appointments are left. Kit cars and imports are pretty much at the bottom of the pile! You've virtually no chance of getting a kit car IVA appointment just now. We have a backlog of 72 vehicles and we're building about 10 of that sort each week, but can only get about 8 test appointments a week, so we're actually going backwards.

On the plus side, the Freelander is going OK at the minute....

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Stanleysteamer said:

So sorry to hear about your Mrs. Wifey also cannot walk far now due to back problems and also is on industrial amounts of painkillers. 2 miles would be a marathon to her and she would never make it. I am hoping she has a blue badge tho I know she will hate having to get one. Could she not do GP work? Not much standing up in that i'd a thort. Do remember going to a vastly overweight female GP once who never left her seat just got me to put parts of my bod within her reach being directed by her huge stick!
But my ma used to say GP was boring and that was long before Dr Sh!tman.
Wifey had to change jobs due to this, no more jumping on and off planes or ships.
She must feel like her legs have been cut out from under her in a metaphorical sense at the least. Give her my best and tell her i do hope she finds something.
Talking as a carer I know it can't be fun for you either, managing her desire for independence but at the same time making sure she doesn't overdo things. It becomes a way of life.
As for IVA, that is interesting. Typical govt office, understaffed at the best of times. No leeway in a problem time. So sorry to hear of the problems you are having. such a shame you cannot get some sort of type approval that means you can just get them rolling off the production line providing they are all thre same. But I assume that would mean crash testing and the whole shooting match. No luck there then!
Glad I saw SVA and IVA coming all those years ago. But it cannot be doing the kit car industry any good!
All the very best.
Stan

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Avocet1 said:

Thanks Stan, that's very kind. And of course, my best wishes to your wife! I doubt, at this stage of her career (she's 54 but don't tell anyone I said that!) she probably wouldn't re-train as a GP. She's a consultant anaesthetist at present, so becoming a GP would mean "going back to school", as it were, and doing her MRCGP exams all over again. She might well get a desk job in "governance", our "public health" or something like that, but we'll see. What did your wife do before her back intervened?

IVA is a very small part of what we do (fortunately) probably less than 10% of the vehicles we do are subject to IVA tests. As you say, a "type" approval would be the way to go, and that's what we do for our big sellers. However, the nature of our game (wheelchair accessible vehicles) means that a fair few customers have needs that can't be met with the "production line" ones and they need a fair degree of "tailoring" for a particular disability. When that happens, IVA is really the only option available. The other options is a "post-registration modification", but then, of course, the vehicle is already registered and belongs to someone. Logistically, that makes things difficult.

I have mixed feelings about IVA / SVA. Before SVA was introduced, there was some real sh1te out there. Not just illegal, but downright dangerous. The safety record for kit cars wasn't as bad as it could have been, mainly because they do such tiny mileages. Also, the worst ones tended to be too unreliable to get far enough to actually kill people! I had watched the effect of minimal regulation on the minibus, bus and coach industry before my time with kit cars (or rather, in parallel with it) and it was interesting. The UK (particularly when it came to minibuses) had lots of little "railway arch" operators, converting vehicles in a very low-tech way. Similar with coaches. Apart from Duple and Plaxton, most of them were very small operations. On the Continent, where the regulatory framework was a lot tougher, you seemed to get a smaller number of much bigger companies, making much more advanced vehicles. In the short term, IVA undoubtedly killed-off a few of the weaker kit manufacturers, just as a tougher regulatory framework for minibuses (after a couple of pretty high profile fatal crashes in the 1990s), killed off some of the weaker mini and midi bus and coach manufacturers. Those who were left, however, were the ones who built a better product anyway. It almost seems like the companies who can cope with regulations are also the ones who are bright and forward-thinking enough to develop better products? In the long term, I'm not sure SVA / IVA was bad for the kt car industry, I think it probably just "pruned out" some of the dead wood. The only ones I felt sorry for, were the ones who were making very faithful replicas of vehicles that were too old to have had to comply with any of the modern regulations. Vehicles that would never have had seat belt anchorages or rounded-off corners. It killed off their authenticity. Even then, some of the brighter and more capable manufacturers came up with fairly ingenious workarounds!

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Stanleysteamer said:

And thanks too for your best wishes for wifey, passed on of course.
I take your point about having to go back to school for Mrs Avocet. At her age many are looking towards early retirement I'd a thought. Many of my colleagues went before 60, in fact I was only one of three that I knew in my school that lasted the race, over the 34 years I was there. So it all depends on how she feels about flying a desk. Whatever she decides I wish her all the best with it.

Wifey had a back injury a long time before I met her but the pain was all in her hip as it was referred pain and the dickhead doctors, who only come to the south coast for the watersports, failed to diagnose 3 slipped discs for 7 years. So the harm done to her nerves in her left leg became permanent. (Eventually spotted in 20 minutes by a specialist in London.)

But she still drove and got around etc and eventually became an international IT auditor, hence the jumping on and off the Tube, planes and ships. But when her back got worse and she had a few ops ending up with the titanium cage in her back, she could no longer cope and went for jobs as a compliance officier. She still had to travel a bit but usually with a colleague or management, and always in the UK. So she was driven or went car-train-car.

I agree with your points about SVA/IVA and kit cars. Some builders had the sense to make their cars safer than otherwise but others just threw them together and as you say got lucky. Interesting all that stuff about coach builders. Didn't really know that.
Mind you, if the base/donor vehicle was as inherently unsafe as say a Triumph Herald, then the improvements would have to come from somewhere!
But yes, SVA did weed the cr@p out.
And you are right about the replica crowd. A car I have always wanted to build is the SS Jaguar replica, built by
https://suffolksportscars.com/suffolk-ss100-jaguar/
It is dead right, even down to the fuel tap on the dash. I have talked to them at shows like the Stoneleigh show, but the smiles and willing answers dried up the more I asked them how they got round everything to do with SVA as it was then. I am convinced they had a dash they put in each car for the test then took out before they finished the car. Also seat belt mountings, how did they get the top of the three part harness high enough without fitting it to a rollover bar that wasn't there?
I have in my garage a car that I am building that I won the kit for in a competition. It will be a (very) poor mans replica of the same thing, so you can see why I got it registered before SVA came in but I have tubed the chassis to take mounts for a very strong rollover bar to which I will attach the upper seat belt mounts. Although it did come with mounts, which to be honest are not far off and might even comply, never measured them. Steering wheels are another thing!
Hey Ho!
Do hope things get better for your wife, if only mentally. Knowing where she will be going will be some relief I hope.
All the best
Stan

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Avocet1 said:

Ah yes, I love the Suffolk! I used to (vaguely) know Roger Williams. He was one of our clients when I worked at STATUS. Nice old chap. Presumably long-retired now? And yes, by definition, if it's any good as a replica, it WON'T pass an IVA! It's not just the belt anchorages and the sharp edges. Like a Series 1 Landy, the headlights are too far inboard for the current lighting regs, yet as soon as you move them, you change the character of the vehicle. I spoke at length with DfT when the SVA scheme was originally being mooted (in fact, I wrote a few bits of the Inspection Manual)! They were in a difficult position. On the one hand, they we were very sympathetic to replica manufacturers, but on the other, couldn't continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that "new" vehicles were being produced, which didn't meet the current legislative requirements. They'd basically have had to endorse people breaking the law. We lobbied hard for changes to the law (which is where some of the "amateur builder" concessions came from), but there were limits. We (and to be fair, DfT) really stuck our necks out, bending the rules for Caterham / Westfield / etc - style vehicles. Again, for many of the same reasons. Eventually, there was a tacit (but never written-down!) agreement that they wouldn't look too hard at DVLA allowing the use of a donor "chassis" and a few components to allow you to somehow claim that the vehicle was still the original vehicle. (I built a Burlington around about that time, which was always registered as a Triumph Herald)! They just assumed that eventually, the supply of donor vehicles with a separate chassis would dry up naturally. What they (or we) hadn't foreseen, was the rise in the number of "panel conversions" whereby kit manufacturers could escape IVA using the floorpans of cars like the MR2s and I think, Z Series BMWs.

Your poor wife! That must be pretty horrible for her. Mrs. A was a keen cyclist before the accident, but has done hardly any since, because she can't twist her foot to unclip from the pedal cleats and is frightened that at some point, she'll come to a stop and have to put her left foot down (which won't really support her properly).

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Avocet1 said:

The funny thing, was that a lot of the custom / hot rod guys were often absolutely fine for "sharp edges"! Their penchant for having no door handles and minimalist dashboards served them well in that respect! Emissions....

...notsomuch...!

Poor Pat. It's awful when the medics we're supposed to trust, don't do their jobs properly. Fiona has seen it from both sides of the counter. It's a very imperfect system - as anything involving humans inevitably is! She's seen the most conscientious and diligent of doctors stuff-up, just a tiny bit, and get hauled over the coals or even struck-off for it. At the same time, she's seen lazy, incompetent ones seemingly get away with murder and come up smelling of roses!

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