Used Car Sales Advice

Wizz001

Hi Guys, sorry this is my first thread but I'm at my wits end here.

I bought a used vehicle from a dealership on July 2 and on 13th October I had problems with the engine whilst the vehicle was doing its first long journey. I contacted the garage and they have taken the vehicle in and diagnosed that the turbo had blown which had flooded the engine with oil which had caused a problem called engine runaway which in turn has completely broke the engine. They advised that the vehicle had a 3 month warranty, and that they offered me to extend that but I had turned it down. They also advise that they had been on the phone to trading standards and they advised that as the turbo was 5 years old and done 50k miles the damage would be classed as fair wear & tear.

Have I been really unlucky here, or do I have any remaining legs to stand on?

I appreciate your help.

Wizz

Retrogamer

Sounds strange. I don't personally know of any garages that call trading standards for advise, but that's not evidence they didn't do it. It's just usually the consumer that calls them though.

I take it the car is 5 years old with 50k miles on it?
What type of car is it, and how much was the original price paid?

Does it have FSH? Was it due a service when this happened?

spacey2012

A Renault Turbo Diesel my guess .

Wizz001

Retrogamer wrote: »

Sounds strange. I don't personally know of any garages that call trading standards for advise, but that's not evidence they didn't do it. It's just usually the consumer that calls them though.

I take it the car is 5 years old with 50k miles on it?
What type of car is it, and how much was the original price paid?

Does it have FSH? Was it due a service when this happened?

Hi its a Suzuki Swift 1.3DDiS. Sorry what FSH? Also the vehicle was meant to be serviced at the dealership but we currently in discussions with them about this because there is no proof of the service. How ever they said that a service would not have picked up any problem with the turbo.

Will

wealdroam

FSH = Full Service History.

Wizz001

wealdroam wrote: »

FSH = Full Service History.

Thansk for that. Yes it does have full service history.

spacey2012

What type of garage are we talking about.
A main dealer or a back street fly by night LTD dealer.
This decides what you may get back and everyone ignores this advice and generally throws good money after bad.

forgotmyname

They are right a service wont have picked up a turbo problem, Unless it was making terrible noises when they started it.

Something you need to learn with turbo diesel engines. If the revs ever start to climb when your not accelerating then you need to switch the ignition off AND stall it VERY quickly.

You would have got away with a bit of a clean and a new turbo, Not a complete engine.

Wizz001

spacey2012 wrote: »

What type of garage are we talking about.
A main dealer or a back street fly by night LTD dealer.
This decides what you may get back and everyone ignores this advice and generally throws good money after bad.

Was a main dealer.

forgotmyname wrote: »

They are right a service wont have picked up a turbo problem, Unless it was making terrible noises when they started it.

Something you need to learn with turbo diesel engines. If the revs ever start to climb when your not accelerating then you need to switch the ignition off AND stall it VERY quickly.

You would have got away with a bit of a clean and a new turbo, Not a complete engine.

And I appreciate that now, but having never heard or seen this practice it was no carried out.

tinkerbell28

I had a very similar problem to this. We paid 10k for a very large car of the same age/mileage.

We were waiting on a bonus to buy new so we would then trade that one in on top.

3 months down the line, total loss of power on the motorway. Would've cost 3k.

The dealer knew that we had rights under soga. Them making noises about trading standards seems designed to scare you off.

It doesn't matter it's second hand or has 50k on the clock.

In our case 10k for 3 months? I don't think so, trading standards advised us we'd quite comfortably have a case if we took them to court.

It very much depends on how much you paid for it. £100's...well you had a few months out of it.

£1000's you could do a letter before action and let a court decide what is reasonable.

Retrogamer

There's only a few things that cause turbo failure on a car with such low mileage and FSH

It's been remapped in the past.
It's been horribly abused.
It had a manufacturing defect.

Or (i think this might be the case) someone has put too much oil in it at some point. This causes high oil pressure and can cause premature failure of the turbo oil seals.
This causes the oil to get chucked into the intake manifold of the engine and you get a runaway engine.