anti roll bar

[bertiethebongp]

Hi all im after some advice i bought my bongo 6 months ago and the garage we bought it from mot it for us and it passed today we had a service from a different place supposedly a bongo specialist and they have said it should never have passed as the rear anti roll bar is missing cut off? do they have to have the anti roll bar? plus the rear shocks are corroded? so any advice needed please as not sure if new garage trying to rip us off or where we tucked up by the garage we bought it off?? would they have corroded that much in 6 months? thanks all in advance

[mikeonb4c]

Whereabouts are you? I would think its a serious breach and should be reported if the garage that sold it got it an MOT without a rear anti-roll bar, as I thought they were essential to safe handling. Seems odd for a Bongo not to have one though. I wonder if they mean one of the anti-roll bar brackets is missing. Should still be an MOT failure I'd have thought but more common and arguably not so serious to safety.

[Simon Jones]

It's not unknown for rear anti roll bars to snap: http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... ed#p587888

I don't think a missing ARB would necessarily be an MOT failure unless it was clear these was meant to be one. For example, we've got no rear seat belts fitted in the van as we don't carry passengers, but there is no problem at MOT time as they are not installed.

The other thing about an MOT is that it just means the vehicle is roadworthy on the day it was presented for testing. Plenty of people stick a different set of wheels to get thru an MOT and then take them off again afterwards. It would be impossible to prove the ARB was not there when the MOT was performed.

External corrosion on shockers is nothing really to worry about unless it at the point where the metal is holed. I bet you won't find any 15+ year old vehicles without corrosion on mild steel suspension components that are exposed to all weathers.

[bertiethebongp]

they said the anti roll bar had been cut off!!
ive got the paperwork from the previous owner and found on a mot in 2008 that there was a problem with the anti roll bar so im assuming that they cut it off then as never been mentioned on mot since

[Simon Jones]

Should be relatively easy to find a replacement from a breaker. This chap has a front one for sale, currently at £12: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/front-anti-ro ... 2a325961d6

[mikeonb4c]

they said the anti roll bar had been cut off!!
ive got the paperwork from the previous owner and found on a mot in 2008 that there was a problem with the anti roll bar so im assuming that they cut it off then as never been mentioned on mot since

Indeed. It sounds odd to me on the face of it and you ought to let someone who is savvy with Bongos have a look at it. I doubt that an MOT station would be comfortable explaining why, if there was evidence an ARB was fitted (the implication being the car needs one in order to handle acceptably, no surprise with a high C of G narrow track car like the Bongo!), it did not flag up that it have been sawn off.

[The Great Pretender]

How the removal of the ARB affects handling depends on how you use the Bongo, in town and plodding around the country you probably wouldn’t notice a problem.
But…………… your Bongo will understeer more in roll until you hit the bump stop (that it will do earlier as you have effectively softened the rear end), it will then oversteer. In layman’s terms the bongo will want to go straight on when you need to take avoiding action then wanting to spin when hard on the bump stop.