MOT advisory brake imbalance

General MOT question.

MOT'd my 04 Disco 2 last night. It passed but got an advisory on headlight aim, no big deal.
But also on brake test which I didnt notice till I looked at the paperwork back home.

The values are:-

Brake effort:-
Axle 1 Nearside 4.63kN Offside 4.42kN Imbalance 5%
Axle 2 Nearside 4.05kN Offside 4.15kN Imbalance 2%

Brake Function:-

Axle 1 Nearside 56% Offside 58%
Axle 2 Nearside 22% Offside 18%

What is the likely cause of this, is it significant or anything that I need to worry about?

Discs and pads are all in good order and replaced all 4 corners at the same time.
Any assistance gratefully received.

seems v good, only a few % in it.

cause? you mean why are they not all the same on each axle?

slightly different wear rates, manu. tolerance, maybe you went through a puddle..

Don't worry about it. 99% of the cars I test have a slight imbalance. There's tons of factors that can change the reading, level of wear on brakes/tyres, weather, even down to the angle that you're in the rollers (if you aren't perfectly straight).

30% imbalance is the limit, so you're miles away.

sticking sliders on the calipers can cause it

Was that actually put down as an adversary?

oldskool said:

Was that actually put down as an adversary?

Click to expand...

ADVERSARY lol

The MOT says

“The braking effort from any wheel is less than 70% of the maximum effort recorded from another wheel on the same axle”

so that would make anything below a 30% inablance a pass?

I wouldnt have thought a 5 and 2% would even be advisory worthy.
mebbe he just wanted to put more than one advisory on a 10 year old motor

livers said:

ADVERSARY lol

Click to expand...

Lol its quite early and i've got a stinking head cold and chest infection so brains not working propperly

Also i cant spell

timtheenchanteruk said:

The MOT says

“The braking effort from any wheel is less than 70% of the maximum effort recorded from another wheel on the same axle”

so that would make anything below a 30% inablance a pass?

I wouldn't have thought a 5 and 2% would even be advisory worthy.
mebbe he just wanted to put more than one advisory on a 10 year old motor

Click to expand...

I know that i is an NT and soon to be an AE, hopefully

What i was querying was did the tester actually put that on the cert or did he give him the brake test print out? which isn't normally done.

Depending on which route taken on MOT computer when inputting data it will automatically bring up 3 advisories which you can click on to add them to the cert, this can be done whether there is a problem with the brakes or not but, it doesn't put actual numbers on the cert.

I know of at least 2 garages in my area that use this to scare customers into having unnecessary work done.

On my D2's last MOT the tester went out on the road with a good old fashioned mechanical g-meter device in the passenger footwell....

They don't have the luxury of 4wd rollers, but they can fix LRs (erm.... and they're a Britpart stockist..) That's an oxymoron I think!

Its a Northern Ireland MOT test which is done by DVTA, not independent garages so theres no additional profit or business in it. It was put down as an advisory, I was surprised given the small amount of discrepancy.