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As above.
3.0DCi Grand Espace last seen 4th April, returned today, 2nd August after long, long dispute and then lengthy repair. Is this some sort of record?
The record will be set when it goes back in tomorrow 😉
who paid in the end?
I just bought a Kia Sedona.
Utterly fed up with french 5hiter family cars.
3 friends all have the big Kia and love it.
The Espace seems to be the worse.
Dear god, this must be the thread for people who've given up on life and are counting down to death.
Dear god, this must be the thread for people who've given up on life and are counting down to death.
...and yet you still decided to participate.
Pull up a chair, and let's all wait for the sweet release of death.
Look Daveyboywonder has been watching too many Top Gear repeats on Dave
Try getting you own patter no Clarksons.
I'm another Sedona fan, it's a big old barge but it can shift along when it wants too!
Shame about your Renault, what went wrong with it? Or is there a link to a previous thread available?
My Son in law borrowed mine the other day and it wouldn't start so they had to call the RAC out, (it was only a starter lead loose) but whilst they were standing there my daughter was belittling the old Kia and he turned around and told her he got called out to far less Kias breaking down than he did her Ford S-Max 😉 made me chuckle anyway!
Surely there are far more S Max on the road than Sedona's?
Ha, thanks for that Mastiles!
8)
I've had a Citroën, I know the pain of French motoring - 1 yr old car, needed engine rebuild and never worked properly.
Renault have eventually picked up 90% of the costs after a snotty letter to their MD
It all kicked off when the fuel pump developed a fault. Dealer wasn't confident in the diagnosis so suggested we start with the cheap repair (£2900). If that didn't work it would have to go back in for a new pump at £3900. Basically experimenting with my cash....
So hopefully resolved now with only minor financial pain.
it cost 3 grand for a fuel pump 😯
Nearly £4k for a fuel pump?!
Well the pump itself costs around £1200, it's the clean room fitting and having to replace every single other piece of the fuel system too that costs!
Since we took all the sulphur out of diesel fuel, there is far less lubrication than there used to be, plus they are using far far higher tolerances these days too.
Delphi fuel systems seem more prone to it failure than Bosch although I've known both go down.
This explains why Espaces can be had on EBay for pennies.
Courtesy car?
I've had bad experience with citroen and peugeot, which mean I'll never buy a French car again. Loaded with kit, pleasant to drive, but nightmare to live with. I'm currently with skoda and it's a world apart
Yeah I had a pug too (205, one of the early ones but it was quite new at the time) - the carb stopped working because a vacuum hose in the sunroof broke.
I kid you not.
Yup. Eye watering sums of money. The engine needs to come out which is >£1500 !!!!
Renault uk have come good on a settlement for work on a 2005 car at the end of the day. So car choice next time may be a conundrum.
Just hope I'm not back on here saying it's a crock again!
I was stung with an 807 pug.
I would not drive another peugeot even if it was given to me.
Long live the Kia.
To be fair to Renault i have a clio and its been a fab little car, close to 70mpg, 700mile to the tank and so cheap to run.
I think the french do very good small cars but anything bigger than Megan size forget it.
Just never use their dealers to fix anything.
anything bigger or equal to Megan size forget it.
Fixed.
Last car was a Megane. Fool that I was I kept it for 7 years. Eventually it died. Never Renault or French again.
Moral of the story, don't take your car to an incompetent dealer, which from experience seems to cover most Renault dealers!
Delphi and Bosch systems both have issues.
Delphi is more likely to give running problems, while Bosch is just likely to stop working.
If the pump packs in, dealers will cover their arse by saying the complete fuel system needs replaced, but I've done and seen plenty pumps done without changing anything else, and never seen any problems as a result of it.
engine out for a fuel pump?
£4k for a fuel pump?
Crikey!
Maybe the fuel pump has to have a special position to make it safer in a crash 🙄
They really need to make the people who design modern cars live with them for a year and fix anything that goes wrong themselves. That would get them designing cars better and easier to fix.
andyl - Member
engine out for a fuel pump?
If you have the v6 petrol its engine out for spark plugs or so i was told.
I also belive its engine out for the cam belt on it as well.
This is one of the reason why we ended up with a Volvo xc90 as a family car.
And this is why I will never buy a) French, or b) new.
I have an 04 scenic that has had some minor issues over the years but runs ok. The internal design is spot on if you have kids, shame the engine/electrics are pants.
why not new? If you get something with a long (5+ years) warranty and change car at the end it's probably the 'safest' way of doing it? Would cover stuff like the OP's problem.
Sorry, but that's a staggeringly naive way of spending your cash, wwaswas. Not new because although the 5-year warranty might cover £3900 for a new fuel pump, I'm pretty sure I'll have lost at least 3 times that when I come to trade in.
Buy a £6k second hand car (and £6k gets you A LOT of car on the 2nd hand German/Jap market), pay 2nd hand prices for parts and repairs, don't bother about dealer servicing, when you fancy a change sell it for £5k and get something else.
French cars? Had a Citroen Berlingo Multispace 5 years from new nothing ever went wrong (except for me crashing it!!) and we didn't treat it well. Still being driven locally by new owner. Having said that it was the base version with nothing much to go wrong.
I did have one good French car - a Renault Clio RSi. As above - others have found the Clio to be good.
I was disappointed to see that one go.
Several of my colleagues went through a phase of buying French cars a few years back - all of their cars were crap, including the Laguna which had catastrophic engine failure after a year (entirely new engine required), Berlingo which spent almost a year in the dealership waiting for a new dashboard, and an Espace which effectively consumed my friend's salary each month with a laundry list of repairs. My espace driving buddy had also bought his wife a 2nd hand Clio, which was the only one out of the lot which didn't have any major issues.
The thing that baffles me is that people keep buying French cars, despite them having a long-term, consistently bad reputation for reliability and high service costs.
Why do people still buy French cars? They are all, without exception, steaming piles of turd. If you want something cheap and anodyne get something Korean or a Skoda, no?
Oh dear nearly about to push button on Citroen Grand Picasso, *ponders alternatives*
Bimbler are you mad?
Bimbler are you mad?
+1
Really - buy something else, anything else, just don't buy a French car!
£4k for a fuel pump?
You could buy a mountain bike for that..... 🙂
ditch_jockey - Member
Bimbler are you mad?
+1Really - buy something else, anything else, just don't buy a French car!
Unless, of course, it is bought assuming it WILL go wrong - ie, spend £X on it rather than £Y on a 'better' car and use £Z left over to cover the repairs if needed.
ahem, ahem
Which? 2011 Car Survey - Most reliable new cars (0 - 3 years old)
Model Category Ranking / Total models in category
Scénic MPV 2 / 23
Mégane Medium 3 / 24
Modus MPV 7 / 23
Clio Supermini 7 / 38
You've got to love a manufacturer that picks up 90% of the cost of a problem on a 7 year old car - bet if it had been a VW Sharan (paragon of reliability that it isn't) then VW would have jsut laughed! BTW probably the same Bosch injection kit too...
marsdenman - Member
£4k for a fuel pump?You could buy a mountain bike for that.....
£4k on a mountain bike? You could buy a perfectly reliable second hand German car for that.
Ask dave_b on here about his "perfectly reliable German car". I've had 5 French cars over the years. All were great. Worst choice I ever made was a new-style Honda Civic. Reliability was patchy at best but the number of ongoing - and never resolved - minor problems was shocking.
marsdenman - Member
£4k for a fuel pump?
You could buy a mountain bike for that.....
£4k on a mountain bike? You could buy a perfectly reliable second hand German car for that.
Joking apart - surely for £4k it would be quicker / simpler all around to just drop a new engine in?
= one happy (ok, slightly happier customer) relating tales of 'good customer service' and they send the broken lump back to base for a leisurely repair (which is what I guess they did - can't see too may clean rooms being installed in dealerships...)
Actually yep - in balance i've had 2 Peugot's
405 TD which I ran till it died.
205 Petrol which also ran till it was sold for next to nowt as the MOT repair quote was £600 on a car worth about £1k. It was only a 1.4 petrol with circa 160k miles on it.
I certainly won't be in a rush to purchase a VW after someone I knew who's engine blew up in his Golf after not that many miles (under 80k I think). He had the car properly and regularly serviced and pampered it beyond what is normal for a healthy person. VW gave him zero help at all towards a new or reconditioned engine.
Just by way of balance I am now on my fourth citroen and so far have had no issues with them at except service parts you would expect. Two of them were run to 100k+ miles without issues. I'm now hoping the fourth one doesn't bite me on the behind! Have had more issues with Fords to be honest.
[quote> http://www.reliabilityindex.com
Very useful for making sensible decisions.
Nice link, seems the c4 scores quite well (lthough no data yet for Grand Picasso), while C-Max, Octavia, Volvo XC90, VW Touran score poorly
Intreasting that warrenty direct score the xc90 low where as the owners score it as high. I know that the older ones have an issue with the AWD but not that much goes wrong with them.
Another site I like is www.honestjohn.co.uk which also seems to have lots of real world info.
My brother had a laguna, which had a nasty habit of killing the engine as the air con belt tensioner would fail, which would throw the belt, which would take out the cam belt, which would kill the engine.
Did it twice in two years, so he sold the car.
When he spoke to the dealer, he mentioned 'they do that a lot!'
Shit cars, wouldn't touch Renaults with someone else's.
Bimbler
We have had a Grand Picasso for 4 years [70000 miles] it has been a great car and no problems. Been to the Alps 3 times with it loaded up with 4 bikes, the rear suspension self levels so you dont know the bikes are on. Have just swapped it for a newer one.
My brother had a laguna, which had a nasty habit of killing the engine as the air con belt tensioner would fail, which would throw the belt, which would take out the cam belt, which would kill the engine.
Which is exactly what my Megane did, wonderful cars Meganes! Saying that I now have a Peugeot, so have to put up with good reliable mechanical bits, but comically french everything else (built in sat-nav bust, hilarious beeping on board computer error messages about there being 'No fault' with the rear lights, of course there isn't a fault, they work!!!)
I had an 04 Nissan Micra as my second car, which unbenownst to me at the time of purchase was actuallly secretly French (made in conjunction with Renault). 3 minor recalls in the first 2 years, then once it hit three years it was a disaster. Four starter motors, a chunk of the engine, a shonky EGR valve, an oil leak and the entire wiper rack needed replacing. It finally died at five years of age, with just 75,000 miles on the clock. It was a bloody diesel as well.
Meanwhile, my first car, a Vauxhall Corsa, is still going strong after 17 years. I sold it six years ago, and it had 120,000 mile on the clock then. And it's petrol. :/
£4k for a fuel pump?
You could buy a mountain bike for that.....
£4k on a mountain bike? You could buy a perfectly reliable second hand German car for that.
😆
What a rip off everything is these days. £4k on a fuel pump? Seriously? What is it made from, gold?
You've got to love a manufacturer that picks up 90% of the cost of a problem on a 7 year old car - bet if it had been a VW Sharan (paragon of reliability that it isn't) then VW would have jsut laughed!
...good point. It's a 2005 3-litre diesel with 80k on the clock. In theory it should be reliable for ever. I've had it since 2009 and it was okay for just six months. Since spring 2010 it has been in and out of the garage for misfiring issues umpteen times.
A couple of hundred quid at a time but never really fixing the problem.
The ultimate solution was rediculously expensive and not guaranteed to fix the problem - the car was in effect beyond economical repair. Top of the range Grand Espace Initiale worth peanuts and broken.
My resultant snotty letter to the MD secured a good discount, but the dealer secured the balance ... 75% from the warranty team (I believe because this is not an isolated case) and 15% off customer services as an apology.
90% ! As chrissyboy says I can't imagine many manufacturers standing by their cars in such a way.
The reliability index has to be taken into consideration along with other things, peoples experiences are important too.
I won't touch Ford as it would mean I would have to visit my local dealer, who I have had to deal with through work with my Ford Transits, the local dealer is rubbish!
The local Renault dealer on the other hand who have serviced my Master have been fantastic.
I just looked on that reliability index for a Hyundai, there isn't any there! Is that because they have a five year warranty and don't need expensive aftermarket cover??
By the time they are five years old no body is going to be buying expensive aftermarket policies.
Me thinks I'll look at Hyundai for my next car 😉
I certainly won't be in a rush to purchase a VW after someone I knew who's engine blew up in his Golf after not that many miles
Exactly how did it blow up?
Yep, another Renault hater here, scenic and a CLio which nearly bankrupted us. Renault were zero use as some of the moajor failures on both were just out of warranty. Dealers were even worse. We had one issue whcih they couldn't diagnose the fault for, as the warranty was dealership not manufacturer (after the first year) the dealer wouldn't pay for the repair until they knoew what was wrong but they the Renault experts couldn't decide what was wrong.
9 weeks to replace an airbag in the Clio that blew when it shouldn't have, i.e. no impact and no one sitting in the seat! Dealer managed to destroy the ABS pump and the circuit board in the dash repairing it. Got the car back at 5pm in December to discover just as I was about to join the motorway that both low beam and high beam on both headlights had been blown. Limped it back to the dealer in gloom on the front fogs. That was all the Clio (anyone remember Clio bonnets openning at 70 mph, Renault put it down to owners not servicing the bonnet catch properly despite the fact it wasn't mentionned in any of their service literature). Scenic striped the splines from it drive shaft pulling away from traffic lights.
Best response from a dealer though was with the Scenic which we had extreme trouble starting at one point. When we finally got it into the dealer it started fine. The dealer couldn't work out what the problems was so told us to bring it in next time it wouldn't start. 🙄
Now own a VW Touran which has been fine for 2 years and a Honda CRV wihch is excellent after 6 years.
Caveat, we did have a Peugeot 205 Diesel that had 275k on the clock when we sold it, now that was cracking little car although a tad basic.
My rule with French cars
Small and basic, probably pretty good and will run forever with little care.
Large and Luxury, will depreciate hugely then everything electrical will fail and/or fall off 2 days after warranty expires.
A chap at work has just got his 2yr old Renault back. It's the SUV style one, that shares the Quashqui platform & engine (apparently). Anyway it started with them diagnosing a vibration as a dodgy timing chain. So in it goes. Engine had to come out to change the chain...20 hours labour. Week later same fault. Goes back in. New engine...!!! £6900 for the engine, another 26 hours labour this time. Luckily the warranty picked up the tab. They took all the a/c & pumps off the new block, to refit the old parts. They even refitted the old clutch. Ok, so they have come good in the end, but they even asked him to pay for the courtesy car.
I certainly won't be in a rush to purchase a VW after someone I knew who's engine blew up in his Golf after not that many miles
Exactly how did it blow up?
I'd hazard a guess it was a 1.8 turbo, that went bang due to lack of oil pressure caused by sludge build up, and VW would of claimed was due to inadequate servicing...
I certainly won't be in a rush to purchase a VW after someone I knew who's engine blew up in his Golf after not that many miles
Exactly how did it blow up?
I'd hazard a guess it was a 1.8 turbo, that went bang due to lack of oil pressure caused by sludge build up, and VW would of claimed was due to inadequate servicing...
Another bit of balance - I have a 12yo 406 HDi estate (hence big), has done £150k, of which £130k under my ownership. Have had a few problems over the years, but nothing showstopping or particularly expensive.
Wow, £150k is some kind of service bill. Oh, I see, you only paid £130k...... 😀
You see, if you'd spent a fortune on a Passat estate, you would never have needed to service it even if you'd done a million miles, it would have done 70 to the gallon all the time and it would be worth more now than when you bought it. And people would think that you're Jesus. And want to have sex with you.
You should have thought that through when you bought it.
French cars might not be the most reliable, but they can't be beaten for style and chic