Hi all, I bought a 1997 KA yesterday, it had failed an MoT, but the guy said he had paid out for the repairs, but was leaving the country due to a change of plans, so didn't bother to do the MoT.

Obviously I took a big risk, looking over the car quickly it looked ok, and most of the points on the MoT fail sheet had clearly been addressed. In this case the risk did not pay out.

It failed its MoT on numerous items, many more than the last fail at the end of Jan, which is a worry as some bits clearly couldn't have deteriorated that much in that time.

One of the reasons for the fail this time is emissions, there is not masses of smoke, but it has still failed, is this likely to be rectified by giving the engine a service, ie. new spark plugs, air filter, oil, etc?

It is the emissions that worry me the most, the rest of the work I can do fairly easily.

How much roughly would the car be worth? The body looks good, the paint needs a T-Cut.

Its a 3-door, 1.3 petrol.

I'm trying to figure out if it is worth doing the work, or scrapping the car...

Any advice would be great!

Plugs, leads, air filter and oil and filter change could make a difference and probably need doing by sounds of it. You could also put a bottle of Cataclean in the tank before you take it in for a test. That will make the emmissions drop drastically.

Cheers, is Cataclean that 'stop smoke' type stuff?

I tend to have cars that don't have catalytic converters, if it is no longer working how do I tell?

The car is very high mileage, just over 99K, and I should think it needs a service!

One other item on the new fail sheet is corrosion round the seatbelt mounting points, this wasn't on the last fail (end of Jan 2011), so I'm guessing its not too bad, is this a common fault with KA's?