Used car turbo failure

jamiewakeham

Hmm. I'm reading around this. OFT Guidance for second hand car dealers, sec 9.25:

"It is important that the repair or replacement is carried out within a
reasonable time and without causing significant inconvenience to the
consumer.
You must also bear any costs associated with doing so such as
transporting the vehicle to a garage for repairs."

Is this binding upon the dealer? Or does this only apply if there is a major fault? But how am I, a consumer, meant to know? All I know is that the car keeps telling me the turbo's failing.

motorguy

jamiewakeham wrote: »

Literally only just bought it - a couple of weeks ago.

Dealer is utterly insistant that he wants to look at it himself. I want to take the line that the car is unsafe to drive on the motorway - I've been told that the turbo is likely to cut out completely very soon. Can I insist he collects?

I would be making the dealer aware of your concerns and ask if hes happy for you to take the risk in driving the car to him. I certainly wouldnt be doing over 50mph and keep the revs below 1500, so its "off the turbo" as it were.

Say you have concerns that the turbo might fail on the way and see what he says.

All you can do really.

jamiewakeham

When this thing goes into limp mode, 50mph would be very ambitious! 30mph might have been achievable.

jamiewakeham

Just to close this thread off, in case someone comes across it in the future:

The dealer continued to refuse to play ball. His final offer was that I drive it to him and then he'd give me a courtesy car, which I declined as I was unhappy about driving it around the M25 with increasingly-frequent failures.

I then set about diagnosing and fixing the fault myself. Astoundingly it turned out that a Skoda dealer had not applied a software update (but had logged that the update was installed on the Skoda UK register). When my Skoda dealer looked it over, it took them about half an hour to update the software (free, as this was supposed to have been a recall operation) and the car's been perfectly fine ever since.

So I never ended up testing the small claims court's attitude to who should have paid for a new turbo. About the only useful thing I learned from this is that if you have a VAG 1.2TSi engine that keeps cutting out and giving fault codes 11825 P334B (mechanical failure of wastegate actuator) then make absolutely sure that you've got the most up-to-date software on board before you change the turbo.

Cheers
Jamie

colino

You do know that the software update desensitises the car to what was previously considered out of range sensor readings? It is about as close to a fix as a dealer telling you if you have a hole half way up your petrol tank, not to fill it up.

sabretoothtigger

Does seem very strange, software fault but on a modern car I guess its possible. Dam awful software if true and what colino said might be correct (I think its worth a go not dangerous ?)
Its a strange case either way that such bad behaviour occurs so easily.

One for an owners forum

ECU update can drastically alter operation, usually its something to do with the hoops they jump through for emissions

I used to know a garage boss who regularly charged 50+ for ecu trickery, when he mentioned to his boss the test cost only took a few minutes so should cost less; they should be more reasonable in applying fixes and costs, he was then given the high jump. Bit of an industry secret for profit reasons, in that case at least

So I never ended up testing the small claims court's attitude to who should have paid for a new turbo.

Ive been in a similar sort of fix and you have to trailer it (like you I was lucky to find an 'easy' fix). Cost me under 100 to get a range rover man and his trailer passing by to do it, which is cheap/lucky. The dealer was being reasonable; from my view and maybe the courts

harveybobbles

jamiewakeham wrote: »

So the dealer says he wants me to return the car to be rectified.

I'm not too keen on this, partly because it costs me two days

Damned annoyed by this, not least because if they'd bothered to test the car before selling it the fault would have been obvious.

Thanks, all.

Gosh..

At the end oif the day, YOU chose to buy the car from that dealer, knowing that should a faukt arrive, YOU would have to take the car back to them..

As for the SOG etc, the dealer will have to be givben the chance to fix the car - which tyey are doing.



also, they would have driven the car before offering it for sale. Warning lights come on. thats cars for you.

Joe_Horner

colino wrote: »

You do know that the software update desensitises the car to what was previously considered out of range sensor readings? It is about as close to a fix as a dealer telling you if you have a hole half way up your petrol tank, not to fill it up.

That depends whether the range in the original software was correct or not.

jamiewakeham

Colino: this was a universal recall issued on every 1.2TSi Yeti (in fact, I'm not sure it wasn't issued on every 1.2TSi Skoda) and became standard issue in MY2011. I knew about it but hadn't considered it as a possibility as Skoda UK had it logged as having been applied in 2012. The Skoda dealer who installed it was as surprised as me to find it hadn't actually been done.

As for it just being a desensitisation - my limited understanding is that the potentiometer on the wastegate gets hotter under extended boost than anticipated giving it a slightly elevated reading, so the update just extends the acceptable range of readings to incorporate this false positive. So yes, it's a desensitisation, but only in that it desensitises it to an alarm that shouldn't have been happening.

Harvey: well, I did choose to buy from them, but on the strength of a 'warranty' that they explicitly told me would not require me to take the car back to them. When I tried to call on that, they baulked. And the OFT guidance I quoted above seems to suggest the cost would have been on them anyway. But as I said, I have not had to (and, it seems, will not need to) test this in court. Hope that remains the case.

Smi1er

jamiewakeham wrote: »

About the only useful thing I learned from this is that if you have a VAG 1.2TSi engine that keeps cutting out and giving fault codes 11825 P334B (mechanical failure of wastegate actuator) then make absolutely sure that you've got the most up-to-date software on board before you change the turbo.

So you didn't learn that if you want to buy a £10K car then you should select a dealer who offers a bit more than a six month warranty with a £500 claim limit?