# It passed, and here are four things wrong with it > A roadworthiness advisory sheet is a pass with four things noted anyway — careful legal wording, and a shopping list for the next twelve months addressed to someone else entirely. August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/mot-advisory-list PASS, ticked once at the head of the sheet. Beneath it, four numbered lines: a tyre worn close to its limit, a shock absorber misting, a minor exhaust leak, brake pipes corroded but not seriously weakened. The paper is folded once, the way it came out of the printer. It passed. The sheet spends the rest of itself telling you exactly how. ## What is an advisory list actually recording? That the vehicle passed today, and four things about it are worth watching before they don't. An inspection like this has more than a simple pass or fail in it: a straightforward pass, a fail, and a pass with advisories sitting in between — items that haven't crossed the line but are heading towards it. Everything under PASS is something an inspector noticed and chose to write down anyway, even though none of it stopped the vehicle passing on the day. ## Why write down a problem that didn't fail the car? Because "not yet a problem" and "not a problem" are different facts, and only one of them is worth knowing a year in advance. A shock absorber that's started misting is leaking slowly enough to still do its job and not seriously enough to fail on. Noting it now, while it's still an advisory, hands whoever owns the car a stretch of warning before it becomes the other kind of line on the sheet — the kind that stops the vehicle passing next time. ## Why is the wording on an advisory so careful? Because every phrase on it is doing legal work, not just descriptive work. WORN CLOSE TO LIMIT and NOT SERIOUSLY WEAKENED aren't hedging — they're precise distinctions between a car that's fine today and one that's already failing. An inspector writing "tyre worn" without CLOSE TO LIMIT would be making a different claim entirely; writing "brake pipes corroded" without NOT SERIOUSLY WEAKENED would mean failing the car rather than passing it with a note. The qualifier carries the whole sentence. ## Can this reproduce a real inspection scheme? No — and this rights question works differently from every other one in this collection. Elsewhere, a name, a chart or a table belongs to somebody and can be licensed the ordinary way. An advisory sheet is a different kind of object. A roadworthiness test result is a statement by an authority that a specific vehicle was inspected on a specific day — reproducing a real one, with a real authority's name or a real serial on it, isn't a licensing question at all. It's a false claim made on a government's behalf about a car that was never actually examined. Nothing on this design names an inspection authority anywhere, and that isn't a stylistic choice — there's no version of this shirt where a real one would be appropriate. ## Does a sheet like this work for anything besides a car? Any inspection that separates a clean pass from a warning works the same way — a building survey, a lift's safety check, a boiler's annual service report. The format needs three things: a clear pass or fail, a category for issues that haven't crossed that line yet, and a date by which the warning either gets fixed or becomes the failure. It sits beside [a book that also grows more valuable the more it's kept up to date](/stories/service-book-stamps) — one records what's already been done, the other what's still owed. ## Isn't a pass with four advisories basically a fail with extra steps? No — the distinction is the entire reason the sheet has two categories instead of one. A failure stops the vehicle being used until it's put right. An advisory doesn't; it's a note attached to a pass, and treating the two the same undoes the care that went into separating them — the same care that goes into deciding [exactly where a worn part crosses from fine to finished](/stories/brake-pad-wear-indicator). Four advisories on an older car's sheet is an ordinary result, not a car that scraped through. ## Does it print well? Yes — a printed form, a tick and a numbered list are straightforward, sturdy artwork. Keep PASS as the one thing in the second colour — amber suits it — with the numbered advisories in black, set smaller and tighter than the heading above them, the way a real form compresses its detail. A white or pale ground keeps the whole thing reading as paper rather than fabric. ## How do I get one made? Describe your sheet at [JustOG](/) — the advisories, the order, and what's ticked at the head. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). Four things noted, twelve months to do something about them.