Van repair costs, and what vans actually fail on.
Prices for the jobs vans really need, built from parts and workshop times — alongside what 829 million MOT tests show about how often each one comes due.
32 van models Official DVSA data Real UK prices No sign-up needed
Van prices and the test
Ford Transit repair costs
10 jobs priced
Every price broken down into parts, labour and consumables, so you can check the arithmetic.
Ford Transit Custom repair costs
3 of 10 dearer
Cheaper than the full-size Transit on brakes and suspension, dearer on the clutch, alternator and filter.
Class 7 MOT cost
£58.60 cap
Capped at £58.60, just £3.75 above a car. Which class your van needs cannot be answered from the model — the same nameplate is sold in variants on both sides of the 3,000kg line, which is why published lists contradict one another. Where to read the answer, and what it changes for you.
Van data and guides
Most reliable vans
32 models ranked
The vans least likely to fail an MOT — and which of them lose that advantage fastest as they age.
Buying a used van
4 things, in order
History first, then model, then age, then mileage — close to the reverse of how most people buy.
Vans against cars
3 years = 6 years
A three-year-old van fails as often as a six-year-old car, and the gap closes rather than widens.
Van MOT checklist
3 lists by age
What fails a three-year-old van is not what fails a twelve-year-old one, so the list changes too.
Van advisory index
16.7m tracked
What happens to a van advisory after the test, and why brakes are the line worth reading twice.
Average van mileage
53,657 miles
What a van has covered by its first test, and why the odometer explains less than buyers assume.
What van repairs cost
Ten common jobs span roughly fifteen times in price, from about £80 to £1,190 at an independent garage. Knowing which end of that range a fault sits at is worth more than knowing any single figure.
The cheap end. Drop links, a pair, at £80 to £130. They are the most common suspension repair in the country and the cheapest thing on a van’s list. A rattling knock over sharp bumps — drain covers, cats’ eyes — is almost always this rather than a damper.
The middle. Front pads and discs at £240 to £400. Pads alone are considerably less, which is why a squeal caught early costs a fraction of a grind left alone. The squeal is the wear indicator doing its job; the grind is the backing plate machining the disc.
The expensive end. A reconditioned turbo at £680 to £1,190. Clutches and DPF replacements sit just below it, and all three are jobs worth three quotes rather than one, because the spread between garages on a job that size runs into hundreds.
Estimates for an independent garage with parts and labour included. Main dealers charge roughly 50% more. Final quotes come from garages, which price the specific vehicle, its engine variant and its condition. The full list of ten jobs, with the arithmetic behind each one, is on our Ford Transit repair costs page.
Parts plus labour plus consumables, each sourced separately. Parts come from published catalogue prices for the vehicle in the premium aftermarket band — the brands an independent garage actually fits. Labour is the workshop time for the job at £50 to £80 an hour. Consumables are the fixings and fluids the work needs.
That means every price on this site can be taken apart and checked, and adjusted for your own local rate. We are not collecting figures from other price sites and reprinting them.
Cambelts and water pumps. A single van model can be sold with a timing chain, a conventional belt or an oil-immersed wet belt depending on the engine, and the water pump is gear-driven on some and belt-driven on others. Those differences change the labour several times over.
Pricing them properly needs the engine, not the model, so we would rather publish nothing than a figure that only applies to some vans. The same caution applies to servicing, which does not break down into parts and hours the way a repair does.
What vans actually fail on
A price list is half an answer. The other half is how often you will need each job, and that comes from the national record rather than from anyone’s opinion.
Suspension and axle components account for 18.89% of every item vans fail on — the largest single category by a clear margin, and nearly twice the share of brakes behind it at 10.64%. That maps directly onto the price list: three of the ten jobs are suspension, spanning £80 to £430, which is why the order you diagnose them in matters more here than anywhere else on the vehicle.
The second-biggest group is cheaper than most owners expect. Lighting across its categories accounts for around 15% of failed items, and almost all of that is a bulb. Ten minutes with a torch before the test removes roughly a seventh of the national failure risk for the price of a coffee. A long-wheelbase van carries more marker lamps than a car, mounted where they collect road spray, and nobody sees them from the driver’s seat.
Each figure is a slice of what vans fail on, not how often they fail. A category can take a smaller share while still occurring more frequently, simply because older vans fail more often overall.
What they tell you is where to spend attention and money. They do not tell you your van has an 18.89% chance of a suspension failure.
Which van matters more than most people think
Between three and six years old, the gap between the best and worst van model is 15.69 percentage points. The gap between vans and cars as a whole is 7.30. Which van you choose matters roughly twice as much as whether you choose a van.
At that age the Volkswagen Amarok fails 15.94% of tests and the Nissan Primastar 31.63%. But the ranking does not hold: across thirty-two models, a good early record predicts a steeper later decline, at a correlation of −0.65. The models that start best deteriorate fastest, and by twelve years the table looks very different.
Two things follow. A ranking built on nearly-new vans should not be used to buy a twelve-year-old one. And whatever the model averages say, an individual vehicle’s own record of passes, failures and repeated advisories is a better guide than any of them.
Our own analysis of the DVSA MOT testing dataset, published as open data: 829,654,015 tests across 137,840,356 vehicles, with every advisory and every failure recorded in Great Britain. Thirty-two commercial models were classified from the vehicle record.
Every figure may be reproduced with attribution, and nothing sits behind a form. If a different cut of the data would be more useful, we will produce it on request.
What vans actually fail on
A price list is half an answer. The other half is how often you will need each job, and that comes from the national record rather than from anyone’s opinion.
Suspension and axle components account for 18.89% of every item vans fail on — the largest single category by a clear margin, and nearly twice the share of brakes behind it at 10.64%. That maps directly onto the price list: three of the ten jobs are suspension, spanning £80 to £430, which is why the order you diagnose them in matters more here than anywhere else on the vehicle.
The second-biggest group is cheaper than most owners expect. Lighting across its categories accounts for around 15% of failed items, and almost all of that is a bulb. Ten minutes with a torch before the test removes roughly a seventh of the national failure risk for the price of a coffee. A long-wheelbase van carries more marker lamps than a car, mounted where they collect road spray, and nobody sees them from the driver’s seat.
Each figure is a slice of what vans fail on, not how often they fail. A category can take a smaller share while still occurring more frequently, simply because older vans fail more often overall.
What they tell you is where to spend attention and money. They do not tell you your van has an 18.89% chance of a suspension failure.
Which van matters more than most people think
Between three and six years old, the gap between the best and worst van model is 15.69 percentage points. The gap between vans and cars as a whole is 7.30. Which van you choose matters roughly twice as much as whether you choose a van.
At that age the Volkswagen Amarok fails 15.94% of tests and the Nissan Primastar 31.63%. But the ranking does not hold: across thirty-two models, a good early record predicts a steeper later decline, at a correlation of −0.65. The models that start best deteriorate fastest, and by twelve years the table looks very different.
Two things follow. A ranking built on nearly-new vans should not be used to buy a twelve-year-old one. And whatever the model averages say, an individual vehicle’s own record of passes, failures and repeated advisories is a better guide than any of them.
Our own analysis of the DVSA MOT testing dataset, published as open data: 829,654,015 tests across 137,840,356 vehicles, with every advisory and every failure recorded in Great Britain. Thirty-two commercial models were classified from the vehicle record.
Every figure may be reproduced with attribution, and nothing sits behind a form. If a different cut of the data would be more useful, we will produce it on request.
Questions
The general questions about running and repairing a van. Anything about a specific model, test class or repair is answered on the page for it.
How much do van repairs cost in the UK?
Common jobs run from around £80 for a pair of drop links to £1,190 for a reconditioned turbo at an independent garage, parts and labour included. Brakes sit in the middle at £240 to £400 for pads and discs. Main dealers charge roughly 50% more across the board.
Are vans more expensive to repair than cars?
Less than most people expect on the big jobs. A van turbo or DPF replacement costs within a few pounds of the same job on a small hatchback, because the components are similar and the labour is comparable. The real gap is suspension, which is also the category vans fail on most.
What do vans fail their MOT on most?
Suspension and axle components, at 18.89% of all failed items — the largest single category and nearly twice the share of brakes behind it. Lighting across its categories accounts for around 15%, and almost all of that is a bulb rather than a repair.
Does the model of van make much difference?
More than whether you choose a van at all. Between three and six years old, 15.69 percentage points separate the best and worst model, against 7.30 points between vans and cars as a whole. But the ranking shifts with age, so a table built on nearly-new vans is a poor guide to an older one.
What happens if I ignore an advisory on a van?
Across the national record, 12.00% of advisories written on vans had become failures by the next test, against 10.79% on cars. The median gap between an advisory being recorded and the failure it turns into is 376 days, which is roughly one test cycle — long enough to forget, short enough to matter.
How do you work out these prices?
Parts plus labour plus consumables, each sourced separately. Parts come from published catalogue prices for the vehicle in the premium aftermarket band, labour is the workshop time for the job at £50 to £80 an hour for an independent garage, and consumables are the fixings and fluids the work needs. The arithmetic is shown in full on the model pages.
Why do you not price cambelts or servicing for vans?
A single van model can be sold with a timing chain, a conventional belt or an oil-immersed wet belt depending on the engine, and those differences change the labour several times over. A model-wide figure would be wrong for most readers. Servicing has a separate problem: it does not break down into parts and hours the way a repair does.
Where does your failure data come from?
Our own analysis of the DVSA MOT testing dataset, published as open data: 829,654,015 tests across 137,840,356 vehicles, covering England, Scotland and Wales. Thirty-two commercial models were classified from the vehicle record. Northern Ireland runs a separate system administered by the DVA and is not included.
Prices on this page are estimates for an independent garage with parts and labour included; final quotes come from garages. Every figure may be reproduced with attribution. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.