Was I right to reject my car under the Consumer Rights Act, or should I just take it back

born_again

Cars as a rule now have 2 caps. One on the actual radiator & the 2nd which is on the expansion tank. 

Grumpy_chap

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

I fall in the camp of know nothing about cars and wouldn't think my radiator cap could even come loose (do now after reading this) but if it is that obvious why wouldn't the dealer advise such before going to the, no doubt costly, expense of recovering the car? 

To be fair, it is now one of the "show me, tell me" tasks in the Driving Test and really not complicated.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/learning-to-drive/show-me-tell-me-questions-get-ready-for-your-driving-test/

Open the bonnet and tell me how you would check that the engine has sufficient engine coolant

You may be asked how you would open the bonnet and check the engine coolant. 

To do this, you'd check the level marker on the side of the coolant tank - usually a raised line with an arrow pointing to it, or something written like the word 'level' or 'max'. If the water level is within the acceptable range, then coolant is sufficient, otherwise tell the examiner how you'd open the cap and fill to the appropriate level with engine coolant.

Checking and topping up coolant is a basic routine maintenance task.

Easy for the cap to be not screwed back on correctly and fully "home" (as with any cap) and / or for the cap to have a worn gasket / seal so that it allows vapour to slowly escape even though the cap itself is correctly tightened.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Sorry, I thought OP was referring to the cap on the actual radiator itself rather than the coolant header tank. 

NotAnExpertHelp

Thanks everyone — really appreciate all the continued input. Honestly thought this post would have died off by now!

I didn’t go into every minute detail in my original post because at that stage I was mainly asking about the right to reject and how it applied. Now that I’m looking at taking the car back with some assurances in place, my focus has shifted more toward the diagnosis and fix.

I’ve since filled in a few bits in my earlier replies that weren’t in the first post — for example, the coolant level was slightly above max when my dad checked it at the roadside, and he didn’t remove the cap because the engine was still very hot. My wife was understandably pretty shaken at the time being stranded on an A road, and to be honest I’d completely forgotten to set up breakdown cover — it was on my to-do list but slipped through the cracks (I had some explaining to do but I’m still alive somehow!). So it was all a bit stressful on the day.

On the later discussion about the two caps — I wasn’t actually aware of a separate cap directly on the radiator. I’ve always assumed that the “radiator cap” the trader referred to was the one on the coolant expansion tank. Maybe the trader was referring to a different cap than I realised.

I wasn’t trying to leave anything out originally, just didn’t want to overload the first post with every small detail from that day. I’ve tried to give a fuller picture now that I’m focusing more on the fix rather than the legal side.

This thread has been really helpful for working out what questions I still need to raise with the dealer and how best to move forward. I’m still waiting for them to get back to me.