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NO I REALLY CAN'T BELIEVE IT

As my readers will be aware we broke down in Italy nearly 6 weeks ago when our Vauxhall Monterey tow car began to misfire and finally cut out and refused to start as we drove north from Rome.. 

CC Red Pennant advised repatriation of car as all Opel dealers in Italy close for whole of August for hols.  No one to accurately diagnose/fix fault.  Italian breakdown truck garage took out and waved around what I now know is the ignition module as the offending item.

3 towcars home courtesy of CC Red Pennant - not all up to the job.  RP not sure where car was!!??

Our car delayed - with arrival date changed 4 times.  Had to take spare keys to L'pool Lookers Vauxhall where it was being taken to be repaired because delivery company had lost keys and so would be unable to unload from truck.

Car arrived at Lookers on Saturday, keys had be "found" by transport company.

I went to get bikes and other possessions from car found Windscreen had been smashed on its journey home

BUT THE BEST BIT IS TODAY -  Lookers could find NOTHING WRONG with the car whatsoever.  No fault code in EMC.  Charged me £88, one hour's labour, to tell me this.  Did offer to fit another ignition module costing £212 +VAT Italian Breakdown garage had said this was the problem.  Lookers could not find any fault with module at the moment agreed with me may be an intermittent fault caused by high temperatures in Rome 32+ degrees C

I decided to wait and see if the car runs okay and it is now home waiting for a visit form Autowindscreens tomorrow to fit new windscreen.

I'd be interested in any comments from the mechanically minded as I JUST CANNOT BELIEVE IT.  All the stress and expense for Red Pennant and the "experts" say that there's nothing wrong with the car.

I would take the line that if it was considered to be worth recovering from Italy then there must have been something wrong. The fact that it has not shown up at Lookers Garage points to it being an intermittent fault and they are the very devil to find on modern electronic systems.

I would go back to the Caravan Club / Red Pennant people and express your dissatisfaction. The last thing that organizations need is bad publicity so keep every single thing that you have in writing because you may need it for Watchdog. Do not enter into phone calls but all communication must be in  writing and keep copies. The reason that I say this is that the people you speak to will be keeping copies of your telephone conversations and they give you due notice of this. You are not allowed to do so unless you also give notice that calls may be monitored etc.

This may sound a bit nasty but that's the way of the World these days. Good Luck

Hi,

I had a problem with a Saab that I got from lookers Liverpool which was intermittent and regular. They did the same to me and told me that there were no fault codes in the EMC and that there wasnt much wrong. I put up with it for 6 months then finally took it to an independent specialist. After much manual fault finding it was traced to a dodgy turbo and I am now driving a car that is like new.

Moral is be wary of the diagnosis you have been given, if you experienced problems and it was repatriated there is probably a problem. If it seems to be running Ok now I,d probably get rid while I,m winning.

cheers

John

Just be aware that when a garage says "we cannot find anything wrong with it" it does not mean that there is nothing wrong with it.  Mostly, it just means that they weren't competent enough to identify the fault!!!

A local Ford garage has told us more than once that they have applied their best technicians and diagnostic equipment and cannot find anything wrong with the aircon on Mr Ulti-mates Mondeo.  However, when his shirt is sticking to his back and no amount of fiddling with the controls can provoke it into producing cool air - you just KNOW that there IS something wrong with it!!!

The electrical module could be breaking down at high temperature.

 I used to work on avionics (radar and comms) when in the RAF and used to get similar problems we used to soak test (leave them on for a long time) black boxes to see if the fault would appear-so its not just cars that do it!

We had similar problems with our Vauxhall Frontera diesel, it used to hiccup occasionally(like a small misfire!) and would sometimes lose power and go into safe mode (the turbo was'nt coming in) Switching off and restarting cured that one.

It's not funny when you're on the motorway and it loses power

The dealer did quite a lot of diagnostic and changed the MAF twice. The loss of power never gave a fault code as it reset.  Looking on the internet proved that the misfire is a common fault!

It was getting worse so we have swopped it in for a 9 month old Kia Sorento,

We liked the Vauxhall -but as it was coming out of warranty we decided to sell it on !

£40 a time to connect to the computer in the dealer for " no fault found"