My IVA Test
Around May 2015 I was nearing completion of the car. I had put off booking the IVA test long enough so now felt I should send in my application.
I downloaded form IVA 1C from the DVSA web site and filled it in on line and then printed it off. There is a very good help page which explains how to complete the forms.
I also included the following with my application
- form IVA 4 ‘Amateur Build Declaration’ which is as the title says declaring that you are not a professional car builder and that you are an amateur.
- Pictures of the build stage.
- A photocopy of the receipt for the disposal of the Sierra Donor vehicle shell, not scrapping the car just disposing of the shell.
- A photocopy of the receipt for the purchase of the donor vehicle, necessary to prove one donor vehicle and to obtain an age related plate.
- A copy of the receipt for the purchase of the kit.
- My cheque for £450.00 being the cost for the test, correct as of July 2015
I sent all this off on 8th May and received back a test date of 10th July 2015, I could have had an earlier test date but it was my choice as I was on holiday.
I booked insurance with A Plan and made final preparations.
You are allowed to drive the car to the test centre, in our case only 3 miles away, shame as we wanted to bed the brakes in and have a bit of a shake down, but we did take not the most direct route.
The day of the test came and good fortune it was not raining, my son drove the hood with me as a passenger, too nervous to drive, and my other son followed up in his car as support vehicle full of gaffa tape, sockets screwdrivers and enough equipment to fill his estate car.
We arrived in good time for the 8.00am start and the examiner turned up a few minutes later and introduced himself with the opening line;
“I’ve only ever passed a kit car first time once and that was built by an Aero Engineer” and he said it grudgingly as though that one pass had been his failing.
From that point on we knew we would not pass but hoped the pain would not be too much.
The test started and the examiner was quite complimentary on the build of the car whilst still determined to find something to fail it on.
It didn’t take him long to fail it on the rear bottom edge of the valance, small radius.
This is the edge now fitted with correct radius to prevent the sharp edge disfiguring a pedestrian.
The next point he picked up on was the grill in the nose cone, sharp edges, could cut a baby’s head, fail
At this point we were feeling hard done by but he then pointed out the seat belt anchorage points (details in the build tab)
The next fail point was the louvers in the bonnet, sharp edges need covering with rubber so no one cuts themselves
Yes seriously !!
During the drive to the test centre the car must have settled because the off side indicator was 10mm too low so another failure.
Another fail point was the dangerously sharp edge on the windscreen A post
So that was it, we were issued with a ‘Notification of Refusal to Issue an Individual Approval Certificate’ IVA 30E
According to the examiner it normally runs onto numerous pages and takes him an hour to type up so we didn’t feel too bad that ours only run to 2 pages.
Having overcome our disappointment we immediately sent off the paperwork for a retest, with a cheque for £90.00 and had a test date back of 19th August.
We set about rectifying the fail points, the bits of rubber only took a short time but the seat belts took longer as explained in the build tab.
Confident that we had done all that was required we set off for the retest again arriving promptly for the test to be met by a different examiner
who immediately set about to check the car.
I had brought along a copy of the IVA30E and started pointing out the issues that we had rectified.
Without going into too much detail, the examiner had a different view about various fail points like the bonnet louvers and the nose cone grill,
and quickly ticked them off his check list.
He inspected the seat belt mounts and was very complimentary as to how we had correctly and safely repositioned the anchorage points, he then disappeared into his office and came out clutching an Individual Approval Certificate ( IAC )
By 8.20am we were on our way home, big smiles and a satisfying drive home.