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Car warranty f*cking disaster

Who's the warranty with? The garage or an external company? Is there any documentation on the warranty to say it's backed by the FCA or something?

If it's just the 'word' of the dealer, then you may be fucked, though them agreeing any discount is admitting liability and I'd guess an engine labour isn't £500 of hours...
 
I'm guessing there is an oil light an the dash? And if there was no oil in the engine, you must have been driving with the oil light on?

They're called 'idiot lights' for a reason.

I'm surprised the garage didn't tell you to do one.
 
Saul Goodman said:
I'm guessing there is an oil light an the dash? And if there was no oil in the engine, you must have been driving with the oil light on?

They're called 'idiot lights' for a reason.

I'm surprised the garage didn't tell you to do one.
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they must have seen him coming a mile off
 
Saul Goodman said:
I'm guessing there is an oil light an the dash? And if there was no oil in the engine, you must have been driving with the oil light on?

They're called 'idiot lights' for a reason.

I'm surprised the garage didn't tell you to do one.
Click to expand...
You could effectively kill an engine before any warning light came on. Maybe not to the point of it going kaput completely, but it's not impossible.
 
Anyway, OP:
High Voltage said:
If the garage is going to source and fit an engine at a cost of £1200 and they want £500 costs towards fitting it then the engine is valued at £700 - you need to find out EXACTLY what they're putting in, cause if it's just a second hand engine that's been power washed you could be chucking good money after bad and then you'll be out of warranty
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This is good advice.

If you were to be in the market for a new engine, on your own terms and not as part of this settlement, then you could go to a specialist, give them £1500 or so (my make & model as an illustration), and get a new or properly rebuilt engine that had a genuinely useful warranty. That is, not just one lifted straight from another used car whose gearbox had failed and thus was scrapped.

You're not in an ideal position to negotiate the same sort of deal, because they can tell you to piss off and pay full whack for the job somewhere else, but you can try.

On the other hand, if your car has done 200k miles (not as terminal as some think) and is generally in average/poor condition, you might not care too much about this.
 
Saul Goodman said:
I'm guessing there is an oil light an the dash? And if there was no oil in the engine, you must have been driving with the oil light on?

They're called 'idiot lights' for a reason.

I'm surprised the garage didn't tell you to do one.
Click to expand...
Oil lights usually relate to oil pressure rather than level.
 
weltweit said:
By then it is too late.
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No it isn't. The oil light would have been coming on for ages before the engine gave up. It would have started to come on going around corners, as the oil shifted in the sump and caused a momentary loss of pressure.
The oil didn't just suddenly disappear. It was a process that took time, and most likely gave plenty of warning.
 
Saul Goodman said:
No it isn't. The oil light would have been coming on for ages before the engine gave up. It would have started to come on going around corners, as the oil shifted in the sump and caused a momentary loss of pressure.
The oil didn't just suddenly disappear. It was a process that took time, and most likely gave plenty of warning.
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On my car, you would completely fuck the big ends long before any light came on.
 
mauvais said:
On my car, you would completely fuck the big ends long before any light came on.
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Indeed, I don't think big ends will survive loss of oil pressure for long.

That said it is a warning light, it isn't a "your engine is dead" light so perhaps there is some leeway.
 
The "guarantee" is not worth anything. Except a big bill from a dealer you don't like. Move the car to a cheaper garage, get them to put an untested but working engine from a dismantler in. Bill probably will be less than a grand. 200k is a lot to expect from a small petrol engine.
 
mauvais said:
On my car, you would completely fuck the big ends long before any light came on.
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Many moons ago I had a MK1 Golf GTI. I was following the Lombard RAC rally, and the sump hit a rock coming out of a stage in Scotland. The rock drove the sump up and broke the cast aluminium oil pickup pipe in half. It was a weekend, and I couldn't get a pickup pipe from anywhere, so I filled the sump with oil until the oil level was above the broken pickup pipe, and I headed off on my 300+ mile journey home. The oil light illuminated on just about every bend, but the car got home, and on the Monday morning I got a set of shells and a new oil pickup pipe. Only one pair of the old shells showed any signs of scoring, the others were perfect.
 
Saul Goodman said:
Many moons ago I had a MK1 Golf GTI. I was following the Lombard RAC rally, and the sump hit a rock coming out of a stage in Scotland. The rock drove the sump up and broke the cast aluminium oil pickup pipe in half. It was a weekend, and I couldn't get a pickup pipe from anywhere, so I filled the sump with oil until the oil level was above the broken pickup pipe, and I headed off on my 300+ mile journey home. The oil light illuminated on just about every bend, but the car got home, and on the Monday morning I got a set of shells and a new oil pickup pipe. Only one pair of the old shells showed any signs of scoring, the others were perfect.
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yeh. but you seem to have had a vague notion of what you were doing. by contrast...
 
Saul Goodman said:
I'm guessing there is an oil light an the dash? And if there was no oil in the engine, you must have been driving with the oil light on?

They're called 'idiot lights' for a reason.

I'm surprised the garage didn't tell you to do one.
Click to expand...

Of course the oil light wasn't on. If if been driving for a or more week with an oil light on I'd be a fucking div.

I checked oil levels once during the cold spell and it was fine and clean.
 
8den said:
Of course the oil light wasn't on. If if been driving for a or more week with an oil light on I'd be a fucking div.

I checked oil levels once during the cold spell and it was fine and clean.
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Then the only explanation I can think of is the sump plug fell out while you were driving. Was the sump plug missing?
 
Who was the person 8den who picked up the car and said it was probably the alternator? if it was an AA or RAC person would give their opinion more weight.
 
Trying to diagnose a past failure on the internet is probably folly, but how exactly did it conk out on you? Any good noises?

Did the garage elaborate on what had happened to the engine?
 
One failure mode which is quite quick is if the cambelt breaks, the engine normally stops pretty quickly and (assuming it is not a "safe" engine) it is usually expensive to repair.

8den do you know when the cambelt was last replaced (assuming it has one and is not a chain).
 
mauvais said:
Trying to diagnose a past failure on the internet is probably folly, but how exactly did it conk out on you? Any good noises?

Did the garage elaborate on what had happened to the engine?
Click to expand...

No massive bang or smoke no burning smell engine it just cut off. And lost power.

The garage said it was out of oil. Asked me how frequently I checked the oil.

They said there was no oil in the sump and I told them that I only park in two spots and there was no leak there
 
If you had run it into the ground via oil starvation, you would have expected a lot of complaining first. It would have sounded like a load of nails on a spin cycle, and it would have seized. Like weltweit says, what you describe is more like a snapped belt.

So it's a bit weird. It could have put a rod through the block and then let all the oil out there & then, but then that would be obvious.

Or, Occam's razor I suppose, two things happened. One, the cambelt snapped, and then on inspection there was also insufficient oil, but still enough to keep it running.
 
mauvais said:
If you had run it into the ground via oil starvation, you would have expected a lot of complaining first. It would have sounded like a load of nails on a spin cycle, and it would have seized. Like weltweit says, what you describe is more like a snapped belt.

So it's a bit weird. It could have put a rod through the block and then let all the oil out there & then, but then that would be obvious.

Or, Occam's razor I suppose, two things happened. One, the cambelt snapped, and then on inspection there was also insufficient oil, but still enough to keep it running.
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Camshafts can also seize due to lack of oil, and could easily result in a snapped timing belt.
 
weltweit said:
One failure mode which is quite quick is if the cambelt breaks, the engine normally stops pretty quickly and (assuming it is not a "safe" engine) it is usually expensive to repair.

8den do you know when the cambelt was last replaced (assuming it has one and is not a chain).
Click to expand...

Funny I took my dad (40 odd years exp as engineer and mechanic) with me when I was buying it and the thing he insisted they did when they gave it a full service they put in a brand new timing belt
 
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So dad went and had a look no sign the car was running without oil, spoke to yer mans supervisor car will be repaired for free.

Probably because he said either fix the car or hand over the cash.

Christ you never stop needing your dad do you?
 
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