Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[pigtin]

Sorry if this is not really in keeping with the forum but I am somewhat incensed.
My friend’s daughter has just had a bill of 1K for servicing her 5 year-old Fiesta. It appears the plugs were rusted in. They admitted the plugs had never been removed from new and told her it is not part of the service to remove them. This is the main Ford agent and all services from new were either carried out by this agent or another Ford main agent.
They also admitted there had been a factory update on this problem which they had failed to carry out.
Is it any wonder people buy foreign cars?
So when you put your modern in for service 'Be afraid, be very very afraid!

[Old-Nail]

My brother bought a two year old Citroen Zara Picasso from a main dealer, it was a diesel so he looked forward to many years trouble free motoring...until his engine seized six months later!

Citroen said they would pay half the costs 'as a goodwill gesture', my brother sued them for a replacement engine.
Litigation flowed both ways until a mechanic friend went to look at the engine and identified non-original parts fitted, turned out the car had seized once before, been mended on the cheap and sold as perfect.

My brother took photographs of the parts, sent them to Citroen and the main dealer and they then agreed to fit a new engine.
Finally when he went to collect the finished car the Main dealership manager presented him with a bill of £595 for the labour charge, only the engine being free, and refused to hand over the keys until it was paid.

My Bro made it clear that he wouldn't be paying anything, he then walked out of the showroom used his spare keys to open the car and drove it away!

He heard nothing more from the main dealer!

[Greeney in France]

I put my my year old scenic in for a service the service was completed at the given rate BUT they added 268€ to change a light bulb... JUST THE BULB apparently they had to take the front of the vehicle apart to get to it
_________________
www.OldFrenchCars.com

We do these things not to escape life but to prevent life escaping us

[Old-Nail]

God bless our 'oldies'!

[Giggles]

[Penman]

Hi
More and more cars are coming on the market which require booking in to the garage to do a bulb change.
So spare a thought for all those driving test candidates whose tests are being cancelled due to a bulb blowing when they are asked to demonstrate how to check the H/lamp bulbs work.
DSA give instructors 5 mins to fix any fault found before the test, otherwise the test is lost.

One of the classic questions to ask a showroom now is the one about how long it takes to change a bulb.
Although some of these companies offer driving school deals, logos, roof signs, free duals etc, I sometimes wonder if their cars are "fit for purpose" under the trade descriptions legislation.

[62rebel]

to replace the headlight bulb on a VW New Beetle requires the lamp assembly be removed from the car, often damaging either the housing or the locking device that holds it in. as if that weren't bad enough, to change the taillamp bulb requires that it too be removed as a unit. add to that the exorbitant cost of "factory" Osram/Sylvania bulbs, and the customer should get a bottle of smelling salts with the bill.
consider, also, that for a long time, fitting the factory designed tow hitch to the bloated Touareg often resulted in both taillamps being damaged and replaced (paid for by the dealership) in the deal. and that Touaregs with the oh-so-desirable air suspension suffered a lengthy trial-and -error period during which hundreds of air compressors failed.
or that the present Suzuki Forenza has steel rims so fragile that they bend beyond repair under light impacts...

[pigtin]

Couple of years ago my son went to the main dealers for a replacement lamp for the company Omega. He was told it was a Xenon lamp, very expensive (£136) and it was a specialized job to fit it.
The reason was something like: High voltage was present, the power had to be drained out using a computer and that would cost a further £76.
Furthermore: it was adviseable to have both sides done at the same time at a total cost of around £400.
Electrical/electronic engineering is our business and my son told them 'no thank you' and suggested they were trying to rip us of. This was proved when a backstreet garage supplied and fitted the lamp for less that £10.

Don.

[old gto]

Brings to mind our Chevy Suburban a couple years back....had trouble with the fuel pump, located inside the gas tank. Drain it, drop it, replace it with "discout" supply part....twice.
Finally went to Chevy dealership. They wanted $312.00 for a new pump. But the part that went bad was a 6" piece of wire. But you can`t get the wire seperately, you have to buy the whole pump!
Not wanting to wire it myself, seeing as it`s INSIDE the gas tank, (the last place you`d hope for an electrical fire), I went ahead and bought it.
The most expensive 6" piece of wire I`ve ever seen!
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"The only thing I`m sure of.....is that I`m not sure of anything!"

[clan chieftain]

The Fiesta spark plugs are a nightmare to remove if they have not been changed for a while.
Even though I fancy a Smart car the whole back has to be removed to change the spark plugs.
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The Clan Chieftain

[ukdave2002]

I used to manage about 50 field engineers, they all had company cars, could pick any make they wanted and also "buy up" from the company standards. I recall spending a huge amount of my time sorting out issues between the leasing company, garages and our fleet department, normally regarding stuff that was either not in warranty or not covered by the leasing company’s contract. These guys were doing on average 40,000 miles a year, so we were dealing with 2 million miles of motoring per anum.

The only manufactures / dealers who never seem to give us a problem and would go out of their way to support customers commercially and offered great service were Honda, Volvo & BMW, the rest of them seemed to look for every opportunity to find work that was not covered by warranty, and the work they did was often not up to scratch.

A Peugeot dealer told me off the record that because service intervals had been extended to 20,000 miles, their service revenues had been significantly reduced, so they had to look for “other” work to maintain them.

[Den]

Look at the new cars now that don't have dipsticks! How do you check your oil in say a new BMW? You wait for the "oil" light to come on and book it into the dealer. You then leave it there for the full day (most likely) while they remove the oil, measure the volume and then put it back in! Of course that's when we hear the "It was the sensor" line!!

Blame our "average motorist" as this is what the masses want. 100 000 mile (160 0000 km) with no maintenance and a dealership menatlity. Now something that took all of 3 minutes with a dipstick is a magor dealer appt and loss of time for the owner. Just like North American's basic laziness and ignorance of checking tire pressures cause the "Explorer/Firestone tire" myth and has now required air pressure sensors that they rely on and believe. (Most of the time they fail and "false")

My Mother in Law was someone who religiously checked her tire pressures and now she's bought a 2008 Buick and it's all but impossible to convince her as to WHY she should still check her pressures. She's been brainwashed into the "But I have the pressure thing on the dash, I don't need to check the tires anymore"

Unfortunately, the rest of us get stuck with what the masses want. Which is why for instance, here in North America most new cars are now inherently dangerous to drive due to having stability control. the masses believe the hype and don't realize that it causes accidents rather than preventing them.

Modern society is lazy over all else and those of us that can be bothered to do for ourselves are but a small "subculture" with no voice.
_________________
Den.
Reporter-"How's it feel to be Henry Ford the Second?"
Henry Ford ll-"I don't know. I've never been anyone else."

[Roverron]

I read somewhere that when an early Bugatti needed its valves grinding in you started by removing the hind wheels. Then the back axle, gearbox, and crankshaft. Followed by the conrods and pistons. All this was because the engine had a fixed cylinder head and the valves were only accesible from up the bore. When somebody asked Ettoire Bugatti about this he said: 'The valves are made of special material and do not need attention.'
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To Hell with ambition, it drives a man mad, I can scarcely wake up to be fed.

[Dirty Habit]

[Norfolkandchance]

I work for a Volvo dealer currently, and 7 other manufacturers over the last 20 plus years. I know which era of car I prefer to own, one which does not have electronic ignition, management systems, central locking with deadlocks, electric sunroofs. Need I go on...