The day of the IVA dawned and I was on my way (slightly before dawn actually) with the strange knowledge that I was legally driving a car with no registration plates.  I had the paperwork in case I was stopped that proved where I was going, just in case.  I had previously took out a day’s insurance with Adrian Flux who seemed to know how to arrange it if you didn’t have an license plate (it wasn’t cheap though).

The IVA centre is about 2 hours by the fastest route from me but I took my time and went a circuitous route on the side roads to allow time to do lots of braking to aid the bedding-in (and for my own enjoyment of course).  I stopped for fuel as soon as I could as I only had a few drops from a can in the tank.

I can admit to some jitters on this journey thinking that something might work loose – after all, the post build check had only put about 10 miles on the clock so the engine had hardly even warmed up. I drove with one eye on the oil pressure and engine temperature guages but they stayed pretty steady for the whole trip. Of course, I also had my other senses heightened, particularly my nose. There was a moment of concern when I picked up a definate hot-oil smell but I put that down to driving slowly past a roadside McDonalds.

I rocked up at the centre bang on time having topped up the tank, and was straight into the process.  The first thing they did was to ask me to remove the bonnet.  I carefully took off the rubber bonnet catch covers Caterham had supplied and they were happy that they had seen these and they didn’t need to go back on. 

I had been a bit worried about the doors as I know that these are not strictly compliant. But they seemed happy to ignore then as long as I had the mirrors fixed to the windscreen surround.

All in all, the process took about 2 hours.  There was a scary moment right at the start when it initially failed the emissions test but on re-doing, it passed (just).  Apparently, the test is very sensitive to the probe position which can sometimes give a false negative.

The other hiccup was the LED headlights, which are the standard Caterham upgrade ones (the same as Just Add Lightness sell I think).  The testers needed to see some proof that they were less than 2000 Lumens (a new regulation apparently).  A few phone calls to the factory allowed me to track down the necessary piece of paper, see below, which was quickly emailed to me and that satisfied the testers.  Phew.

The tester mentioned a few minor things which I would need to fix, these being the clamp holding the silencer onto the exhaust pipe (needed to be rotated so that the head of the bolt was offset towards the car, and the brake hose which needed a very slight adjustment to be sure that it would not touch the suspension on maximum lock.  Good thing I took the tools with me but it was literally a 2 minute job.

All in all, it was an interesting morning and a great opportunity to drive the car.  The testers were friendly and helpful and definitely not ‘jobsworths’.  They were certainly not out to try and catch me out.

And it was reassuring that I had now had two lots of experts over my car so it should hopefully be reasonably safe and roadworthy.

After a quick, very excited call to home to tell my wife that I – rather than it – had passed, I started the journey back home with an enormous smile on my face despite the rain which had just started. Halfway back, the rain stopped and I was able to take the hood off and fully enjoy the experience. With the cover for the pedal box still sitting on the passenger seat, it did start to get a bit warm in the footwell. But it didnt matter.

After the IVA>>