Edd China’s Basic Classic Car Health Checks: On the Road Tests

Welcome to my classic car health check. Now for this video, we're going to be doing all the tests on the road. Now you wanna pick yourself a route that you know very well. Something that includes speed bumps, roundabouts, a fast road and also a quiet road, possibly even a car park. Something with no CAMBA so you can do a sort of breaking test. Now, bear in mind that about 10% of all MOT failures are down to breaks, and of course in a test center, there'll be using brake rollers, but you can get a pretty good idea of what your brakes are gonna be like if you actually drive about 20 mph on a CAMBA free road maybe even in the center of a quiet country lane if you can get away with it safely. And the idea is you apply the brakes and just actually don't really touch the steering wheel, but just feel whether the car pulls to the left or to the right. If there's a bit of brake judder maybe they snatch or maybe, actually when you lift your foot back off the brake they're still grabbing hold. Any of these things, and you really wanna get them attended to before you go any further. Now for this next test you wanna make sure that you're on a nice quiet road, no cars behind, no cars in front. We're gonna actually do an emergency stop. So get yourself up to a nice speed. Pop your foot on the clutch and then put the brakes on. Now the car should go nice and straight which it did, which is lovely. But you also wanna think about what's going on with the pedal. Did the pedal go all the way down, did it need an extra pump to actually stop? If you do, you've got an issue. Now, if you've got a slightly more modern classic has fitted with ABS, then obviously when you put your foot on the brake, you should feel the pulsing of the ABS system. But also you might see a little bit of light on the dashboard from the ABS light. Now you will also see that when you turn on the ignition but it shouldn't be on any other time during your drive. My next stop is the handbrake test. I'm just gonna slow down to a stop, like so and I'm going to apply the handbrake. Now in an automatic car, obviously just stick it in drive and the car or the handbrake should hold the car stationary. But the manual pop it into first and then basically just engage the clutch bring it right up and you should just about not go anywhere, really you're almost stalling the car. That's pretty good. There we go. So the hand brake is good. Now while you're driving along, preferably on a slightly winding road or maybe while you're just weaving ever so gently on a nice safe road, have a feel with the suspension. Does it feel kind of squishy and vague or is it nice and tight and precise? Obviously, if it is vague you do want to have a look at that as well. And then starting at a slightly slower speed have a listen out for any waring from the kind of four corners, if you like of the vehicle. And if you go faster and faster the waring gets greater than it could well be a bearing, and also hear that under load on corners to the left or to the right. Now you also might find a slightly kind of drawn to your lower growl and that could actually be coming from a differential. Now as you're driving along have a feel or a think about the steering. Does it go nice and straight, does it wobble as you're driving along, does the whole car shake as you're driving along. And in fact when you actually put some input into the steering does it respond instantaneously or is there some kind of lag or delay as the steering sloppy? Now, the last thing to have a look at is the calibration of your Speedo. Ideally if you've got something like a GPS system or some kind of electronic Speedo you can actually compare the speed of your Speedo with what's coming up on the GPS. So if you look there you can see if we're doing 36 miles an hour. And our Speedo is saying just under 40, there will be a bit of a discrepancy because of course it's kind of designed in there so you don't tend to speed but it's good to make sure that it's not too much. Well, that concludes all the tests on the road. Next we're gonna get the car on the ramp and have a good look underneath.