Edd China’s Basic Classic Car Health Checks: A Detailed Look Underneath a Classic Car

Welcome to my classic car health check. This time we're going to be underneath the car. Now, the best way to do that really is to borrow somebody's ramp. If you can't get hold of one of those, do just jack up one axle at a time use axle stands, be nice and safe but also be kind of handy to have a happy helper. Dan, are you there?

I'm here, Edd. Fantastic, right. Now, the first I want to do is just actually spin the wheels. And wait an make sure it's off the ramp and listen for any grumbling of bearings. If there's nothing going on, that's great then kind of wobble it from side to side.

And from top to bottom. And again, you're just looking for any looseness that may need tightening up. Then you can get yourself a pry bar, really give it some. And now we're going to be looking at all the suspension joints and again, the bearing as well. And just looking for any play that shouldn't be there.

In fact, what we can then do is Danny, if you'd be so kind as to actually move the steering from left to right. So now looking again, and if you could wobble it at the end, thank you very much. One of them the same on the other side. Wonderful. So again, I'm looking for any play in any of the joints, but also I can now start to look, extra light there, for any weeping.

If your shock absorbers on this car they're actually inside the engine. Most of course, there'll be in the MacPherson strut there and also look at the brake pipes as well. Look for any perishing that might be going on. In fact, Danny, can you give the brakes a bit of a pump? Fantastic.

And I'm looking for here is any bulges forming. As well of course, we do that on both sides of the vehicle. Everything seems in order. And now is also a great time to look at any rubber Gators. So if you have a front wheel drive car, you'll have some CV Gators here and also you've got the steering rack boots there and even any dust caps for ball joints and the like.

Now the next thing we need to do is pop the wheels off on the front, have a look at the brakes. Now with the wheels off you're now get a much better look at the brakes. Now with a disc brake car you can look through the caliper and look at the pads and see how much material you have there. How anything less than a one and a half millimeters. It will be an MOT fail.

Now with drums can't actually be tested for at MOT. But if you're at home I would recommend having a closer look and you want to make sure that again you have plenty of material on your shoes there, also that the drum itself is in good condition and no scoring. And really that same thing goes for the disk brake if you have one again, you want to make sure that that's in tip-top condition too. The next few checks are in the deep underside of our vehicle. Now an MOT tester, he uses his toffee hammer to do all kinds of checks on the physical kind of nature of the underside of the car, looking for corrosion.

So basically he can flex things. He can tap them, you can press them quite hard and you can even use a little bit of scraping to actually decide whether or not your car is safe. You should be doing the same sort of checks. And really what you want to be doing is actually using our little bit of 30 centimeter radius rule. So any important part of the cars are things like suspension, mounts jacking points, the sills, in fact, all the way along there.

And even things like seat belts and seat mounts that actually go through the floor. And all of those are actually important enough to make sure that if you have any corrosion within 30 centimeter radius of any of these parts, then that's going to need to be fixed before you for an MOT or before your car is safe. Now another little tool to use as little scraper here, find things like brake lines and fuel lines, cables. You can actually feel if there's any corrosion on the underside of that. You want to make sure that they're all in good order before you go any further with anything.

While it under here also need to look at the exhaust system. First of all, it needs to be mounted securely but also you want to check for any damage. If it's crushed in anywhere, if it's got any corrosion, and particularly if it's leaking you can see any signs of soot eating its way out of there. When it comes to the prop shaft, if your car is fitted with one of those you need to make sure that all the mountings on that are actually also very, very secure particularly the bolts, the flange onto the differential. Now the last thing that really your car can fail from as far as underneath of the car is concerned.

That is excessive fluid. Now, obviously it's very subjective but clearly this particular vehicle could do with being a lot drier and a lot cleaner. Well, there we go. That's it. That concludes our health check.