please help with any advice

My def 90 (as pictured on profile) looks amazing, drives good, is the best car ive ever owned until it went to a specialist landrover mechanic and some not too good things were found on the underside. She is a 1997 'P' reg with 91,000 miles on her, have owned her since Nov 2008. The 90 appears to have been in a crash at some point in its life and has a rippled front end chassis and some major corrosion caused after innadiquate and now quite frankly dangerous weld, the 90 was rendered unfit for road use as the chassis was in a sorry state and several other items such as the front axle are twisted. The repairs would need to include a new chassis, or a very good welder!, front axle, rear radius arm mounts, new chassis dumb irons, ime no mechanic so would be costing £000's.
You can imagine the shock on my face as i thought she was lovely, i havent owned her long and when u bought the vehicle it was a private sale and when i inspected her all seemed well as any underside damage had been bodged together and hidden and (obviously) any panel damage had been repaired. The 90 came with an m.o.t which was several weeks old, even further evidence as far as i was concerned that all was well. I am now left 90-less and very angry. What should i do? Do i have any ground to stand on as far as trading standards go and the m.o.t garage passing an unfit for road use vehicle or with the person i bought it from even though it was a private sale for selling a car which they must have known was dangerous?

Please help with any advice!!

Take this up with the seller if you can still find him. If not your in trouble you may be anyway. I always buy private and have been lucky mostly I bought a few wrong uns though and they cost me.

did you not have a very good look under it before you paid for it

yes i did all be it, ime no mechanic. It now appears that silicone was used and then painted to look like weld and the whole chassis was sprayed to make it appear all good. Obviously this has now only become apparent after inspection by a specialist that it was to hide the damage. Do have any consumer rights?!

it has to be "fit for purpose" and by definition a car has to be road legal!

sorry to hear that. thats not cool. i don't know about the legal side of things so will not mention them. but i will say maybe be a bit beware of specialists. they have a habit of finding problems and making them sound far worse than they really are. did he by any chance give a quot efor repair straight after stating it was unsafe for use? personally if it has an mot i would have it checked out by a bog standard garage. i would then have them make relevent repairs to the chassis which should be easy enough, i would then change axles etc myself. nows a good time to learn about fixing them! i think the point i'm getting to is all is not lost and you should be able to fix it cheap ish. do it over time with important stuff first. at least with a landy everything is bolt on bolt off. it sucks, but whoever did it will get caught out by karma one day.

yeah good point but he did have it up on the ramps and pointed everything out to me and showed me the pleces where a screwdriver went straight shrough the chassis. No he did not give me a quote to repair it and he actually wrote up a report against the vehicle for me to use agaisnst the previous owner and the garage which gave it the dodgy m.o.t. Thanks 4 ur advice. I will see if i have any feet to stand on with trading standards etc before i decide what else to do.

I expect the receipt you got with the car said "As seen, tried and tested". In which case you are on your own. The MOT must be dodgy but to be honest if it's that bad then maybe the MOT isnt even genuine.

I'd get in touch with the Dept of Transport head office and show them the MOT and the vehicle. They will come down hard on the garage who issued the MOT possibly even taking their MOT licence away which is worth thousands of pounds of income to any garage.
As for the car itself why not try and find one of them no win no fee solicitors and take out a private prosecution against the seller - if he's still stupid enough to be on the planet.
Failing that get some mates together and go round for a chat one dark night.
Asthe car is effectively scrap you could always crash through his house and/or car and then blame it on the brakes that the dodgy MOT said were OK.

Shifty1962 said:

I'd get in touch with the Dept of Transport head office and show them the MOT and the vehicle. They will come down hard on the garage who issued the MOT possibly even taking their MOT licence away which is worth thousands of pounds of income to any garage.
As for the car itself why not try and find one of them no win no fee solicitors and take out a private prosecution against the seller - if he's still stupid enough to be on the planet.
Failing that get some mates together and go round for a chat one dark night.
Asthe car is effectively scrap you could always crash through his house and/or car and then blame it on the brakes that the dodgy MOT said were OK.

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That's an innovative approach again Shifty Are we feeling a bit grumpy this morning?

Shifty1962 said:

I'd get in touch with the Dept of Transport head office and show them the MOT and the vehicle. They will come down hard on the garage who issued the MOT possibly even taking their MOT licence away which is worth thousands of pounds of income to any garage.

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Assuming the MoT is kosher then this is an excellent idea, they'll probably rectify it for free to stop you taking it to the DoT. So I'd go and see the garage first. I just don't think there is any redress to the seller if they wrote the words on the receipt, it's always buyer beware with private sales.

I wouldn't go 'see' the seller at all, unless you know he'd had it for a long time .. He may have bought it as it was and simply sold it on to you. I would send him a letter in legal speak and see what happens though ...

I'd also speak with the MOT place, but first have a drive over there and see what it's like. Face to face if they have been ringing or doing dodgy stuff, they might not be nice people ...

jzcktv said:

That's an innovative approach again Shifty Are we feeling a bit grumpy this morning?

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Not grumpy just dont like to see honest people getting stiffed.

People operating outside the law continue to get away with all sorts so they cant expect the law to protect them when the worm turns.

I was bought up to sort out problems using the direct approach. Do unto others as you expect to be done by etc. etc.
If you wait on the powers that be you'll get walked on every time.
So called consumer protection is often not worth the paper it is written on.

As a young lad I once bought a car with my hard earned cash and within days the clutch had started to slip big time. Not having the money to afford recovery or to fix it I drove it carefully no more than a mile back to the dealer who, despite me having a valid warranty, refused to sort it saying I'd made things worse by continuing to drive the car. Surely a slipping clutch is knackered no matter how much it slips?

After a quick discussion about the hypothetical cost of repairing all of his showroom windows and replacing all of his super glued door locks or respraying all of his motors (especially if they were to get reapeatedly vandalised) he saw sense and gave me £100 towards the parts. We both parted with no unpleasantness and I changed the clutch myself. He knew he'd been rumbled but I dread to think how many other people would have just rolled over and accepted it. I never bought a car from him again but he did buy back the car when I sold it.

according to the rear of the test certificate, you have 28 days or three months for rust or corrosion related problems to lodge an appeal.. you could still give vosa a bell on 0870 60 60 440.. but i doubt they can do anything after the three months..

trouble is an mot is only any good on the day of issue.as people will swap such things as wheels n tyres to get an mot and then when they get home put the other set back on etc.whats to stop the mot station saying that you have had the accident after the mot and the damage repaired after the mot as "it wasnt there when we moted it" could spring to mind..its then down to you to prove when it was damaged and when you took it for an mot and then so called repaired

Don't waste your time speaking to the seller. The law uses a "caveat emptor" ( Let the buyer beware) approach as mentioned above.
Its up to you to make sure the car is road worthy not the seller.
He doesn't need to write anything in particular on the receipt either.
If he was a dealer who sold the car on a trade basis then he would have to include a statment such as ' sold as seen without warranty given or implied' to create a no comeback situation.
I would go and try a friendly approach with the MOT tester. You may be surprised.
Also, when I've had problems with my defender in the past - as soon as you share them on the forum they never seem as bad

Who's to say it's even the same defender that was MOT'd.

Does the chassis number on the actual chassis tally with the one on the servo/logbook?

Paul D said:

I wouldn't go 'see' the seller at all, unless you know he'd had it for a long time .. He may have bought it as it was and simply sold it on to you. I would send him a letter in legal speak and see what happens though ...

I'd also speak with the MOT place, but first have a drive over there and see what it's like. Face to face if they have been ringing or doing dodgy stuff, they might not be nice people ...

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if there like that il come along 6,3 box and 15 stone and drive a series 3 i think that sais enuf