Engine blew - now the cat. has failed

[Anonymous]

Well.

I took my car to Rogue Systems (or rather they picked it up cos I was so worried about driving it) and the  s:cry: :cry: s:cry:  news is that it needs yet another new engine as it's running on 3 cylinders.  The actual fault is as yet undiagnosed but a compression test has shown that one of the pistons is failing.  To find the actual cause would mean stripping the engine and then it may not be fixable.  So he advises a replacement engine (which he happens to have) because it'll be cheaper in the long run.  So another £2k down the swanny.  Oh, I forgot the cat which has also gone.  So I'm looking at about £3k all told.   And I've already spent £2k on it this year.

The car has only done just over 2000 miles on the new engine, so I made enquiries as to getting some comeback.  But the garage who replaced the engine is blaming the other (for stripping out the blockage in the cat ) and Rogue (and other people I have talked to) say it wll be very hard to prove that it was faulty when it was put in, if it in fact was.  

I'm now so hacked off with it (and because I don't have the money to repair it) that I offered it to Rogue who have made me a low offer.  If anyone else would like to make me an offer than please do.  

Southern Editor (I think..) - let me know if you would like the old engine - may make up my mind whether to get it repaired or sell it.

[kanujunkie]

Sorry to hear your woes Penny  s:( s:(  

try trading standards, they've helped me out no end and even wrote a few letters for me, totally worth it  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

[Anonymous]

If you do end up having a new engine I may be interested in taking the old one of your hands. Just thought I'd ask before you dispose of it.[/quote]

Sorry Markiii...

[Anonymous]

re southerneditors comments, perhaps he could explain why every performance japanese motorbike ive owned over the past 20 years has the same deisgn parameters to a higher tolerance than my roadster and have been totally faultless? any car costing what we are paying for roadsters should be totally trouble free, provided service intervals are adhered to and common sense(not an ability to be mechanically proficient by the owner) are covered. my current bike is lighter than the roadster, makes similar power and revs to 13,500 before the redline. i do not need to, nor expect to have to, join a club to ensure the bike does what its supposed to do without engine failure through no fault of mine. i do apologise, this was not meant to be a rant, but it angers me that ive had to pay to have my precats removed for my own peace of mind when this is clearly a design/production fault which should never have concerned me.
penny asked her questions because she was having a nightmare with her car, she needed help and sympathy, not a lecture! penny good luck and i hope you get a result.

[heathstimpson]

If you do end up having a new engine I may be interested in taking the old one of your hands. Just thought I'd ask before you dispose of it.

Stu is in dispute regarding a replacement hood not an engine. Sorry to hear your bad news Penny  s:cry: :cry: s:cry:

Edit sorting out my quotes  s:? :? s:?

[Jap GT300]

I'm now so hacked off with it (and because I don't have the money to repair it) that I offered it to Rogue who have made me a low offer.  If anyone else would like to make me an offer than please do.  

Let me know the age, mileage and spec and i'll give you an offer.  Whereabouts in the country are you?

Thanks Adam

[Anonymous]

Hi Adam

It's a year 2000 W reg, one previous owner, 33k on the old engine, the new one had 18k when put in and I've done about 2.5k since then.  It's silver with hard-top and air-con with single cd player.   It's in fairly good nick although the wheels need doing (I think Toyota will do these free under the anti-corrosion warranty) and it has had a re-spray on the near-side rear wing because it was knocked when it was in to have the engine replaced (is this the unluckiest car or what???).  The spray job isn't the best in the world if inspected closely (i wouldn't have accepted it but I was working away and my partner took it back). I have to say that because I'm honest and I don't want to waste anyone's time.   Everything else is standard.  I'm between Coventry and Birmingham.  

Can't say I'm expecting the offers to come flooding in but you never know...

[Anonymous]

Yipes - sorry it went so rough on you, Penny. The 2000-series Spyders were the first generation of the MkIII and have proven to be exceptionally problematic.

Per some of the other comments above, I've re-read my comments and I think I gave Penny solid advice and not a lecture by any means. But the way I see it, the Spyder was a niche vehicle for Toyota - they hardly advertised it, few were ever available at any dealership, fewer of us still had a choice in colour, and the main thing MrT did along the various year-models was alter the cosmetics and add a bit of bracing.

The Spyder isn't a Miata. In Mazda's case, they made (and sold) hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of those cars, and have had substantial opportunity to shake out design flaws and perform "silent corrections" along the way. Never happened in our case. We've had to assiduously locate the most serious problems and devise our own solutions, and that's something the Spyder shares with most other cars of this nature.

Like everyone else, I bought this car thinking that I'd get an MG level of tossability with Japanese quality and in many respects I did, but some of these strange quirks the car has are also what give it charm and require the owner to be on top of maintenance, always. And that's all you can say.

Good luck, Penny, and if you decide to give it another shot at some point, jump in with an '03 or newer model and you should have a much different experience.

[Anonymous]

Guess what?

Well, after a long heated exchange with the guy who fitted the second engine, he agreed to contact the supplier of the engine (Nippon?) who have in turn agreed to get an independant inspector to strip the engine and find the cause of the problem.  If it turns out the engine was faulty (what else could it be??) they will replace it.  They even paid for a courier to take it from Rogue to Oxford.  I had to pay for the engine removal though ( £500  s:( s:(  ) and I'll have to pay for a replacement to be fitted although I may fight about that.  Does anyone know my legal standing re: paying for the refitting if it does turn out that the engine was faulty?

I'll post the results.  

P.S. SouthernEditor, - it was a bit of a lecture...   s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

[Anonymous]

best of luck penny, fight them tooth and nail, the harder you push (politlely but firmly) the more chance you have of a result. i also stand by my earlier comments, both regarding contents and style of southern editors original post. hope you finally get a result from this  s:) s:)

[kanujunkie]

give em Hell Penny  s:twisted: :twisted: s:twisted:

[Anonymous]

well it has been a while since I last posted...  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  

Got my car back in early Feb.  Engine was stripped by an 'independant assessor' and fault was diagnosed as two piston rings 'gummed up' - no-one could tell me why but it was suggested that a 'foreign substance' (i.e. diesel) was put in the engine.  Now I'll admit I'm not technical but even I know not to do that.  Plus they also couldn't explain why this would only affect two cylinders.  Anyway, the garage who fitted the original replacement engine - SHIRLEY's in Witney, near Oxford - agreed to rebuild the engine at their cost and the manufacturer's funded the replacement parts - two cylinders and four piston rings.  I was advised this was a good result as the engine would be pretty much like new.  Great.  

And so the engine was sent back to Rogue's - who had the car and they refitted the engine.  (approx £600).  When I picked it up it had a clattering sound (they said 'tappety') which I was told was probably valve clearance as the mechanics at Rogue has spoken to Shirley's who said they hadn't measured the values (I think...).  Patrick said he thought it would be ok to drive - though he wouldn't guarantee it which is fair enough and Shirley's had told them they would fix the noise if we took the car to Oxford.

Many phone calls to Shirley's followed - not a single one returned.  I had to drive the car as I needed to get to work.  I should have just taken the car down to Oxford anyway but I'm self-employed - if I don't work I don't get paid.  The car was driving fine apart from the noise.

So, my partner drove the car on a fairly long journey - He checked the oil before he left and it was about half way on the stick and reasonably clean - when after about 150 miles the oil warning light came on when he took a roundabout a bit nifty.  So he pulled into a garage about 100 yards further on, checked the oil which was just on the end of the stick and so put in a litre of oil.  He drove it another about 130 miles when the oil light came on again, big cloud of blue smoke from the exhaust and a loud sound which he likened to 'a broken cup in a tumble dryer' (not sure how many times he's actually put a broken cup in a tumber dryer...  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  ) and then it died.  The good old RAC recovered it back where it is sitting on my drive again (well at least it'll feel at home.)  I spoke to Patrick at Rogue who said it didn't sound good - it still has the main cat stripped out and Patrick didn't think the pre-cats were there when he replaced the engine.  

This time I'm not even going to bother speaking to Shirley's again, expecially as he put the phone down on me last time we spoke.  I've taken legal advice and the answer was that goods supplied or repaired have to be fit for the purpose and durable. - two months before it breaks down again does not suggest durability.  So I'm going down the legal route.

Just posting this for info really - a bit of moral wouldn't go amiss though.  If anyone has any ideas why it's gone again I'd be interested - especially if it's power to my elbow.  All in all, the car been's mainly off the road for about 16 months and has only down 4000 miles in the engine that was replaced.

[philster_d]

Oh Penny,

I hope you get it sorted.

Supportingly,    s:D s:D  
/Philster.

[Anonymous]

 s:( s:(  

good luck penny