Broken Car advice

TrixiBuG said:
We went there as they boast re-doing Ka bodywork to remove rusty panels and re-spays.
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This merit alone is not a reason enough to 'go there'. It's an £850 car (it's actually not even an £850 car) so panel work should not be a huge concern.

If it is your thermostat that has gone then it should cost under £100. If your mechanic thinks that the fan will stop your car overheating because it's permanently on, stop using him. If he has also not told you to stop driving the car, stop using him.

Stop driving the car if it is overheating - you are potentially causing a lot of damage that will be worth more than the car to repair.
 
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Sliver said:
I would sell it for scrap if you can afford it and put the money toward a newer car because to get it fixed is not going to be cheap.
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Would be better stripping it down and selling it on part by part than just outright scrapping it. I mean, what do you get for a scrapped motor these days, £30 or something?
 
The solution
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Thermostat is a 15 minute job and a 15 quid part on small cars.
However, if you drove it for long whilst overheating it could be very dead.
I think they will just deny everything, say you broke it by driving it too hot and ask you to pay for the repairs which will be a significant % of what you paid to buy the car :(
 
stopper said:
Second hand ones don't, they just need to be "as described"
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Thats only correct if you're buying privately, when buying from a trader they need to be:

As described
Fit for purpose
Of satisfactory quality

Of course depending on the age of the car and the price you pay for it, the last 2 points are a little open to interpretation - you couldn't reasonably expect an £850 13 year old car to be in perfect condition, but conversely, you wouldn't expect a 6 month old £15k car to die after 300 miles

"Fit for purpose" can also cover things like if you explicitly tell the dealer you need a car to transport a dog and 3 kids around, and then they sell you an MX-5 then they're in breach of SOGA (although good luck proving it :p)
 
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You get what you pay for really. Sucks but that's not a lot of money for a car :(

Oh you were the one that was going to buy that dodgy Golf from that terrible friend lol :x not much luck with cars it seems.

How come you reduced your budget by about £1500?
 
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When car shopping for my other half I hated dealing with dealers who had cars in at £3-5k let alone sub £1k..

Sadly with a lot of traders the warranty they go on about is barely worth the paper its written on.
 
Haggisman said:
Thats only correct if you're buying privately, when buying from a trader they need to be:

As described
Fit for purpose
Of satisfactory quality

Of course depending on the age of the car and the price you pay for it, the last 2 points are a little open to interpretation - you couldn't reasonably expect an £850 13 year old car to be in perfect condition, but conversely, you wouldn't expect a 6 month old £15k car to die after 300 miles
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This sounds like the standard first car dealership game. In this case you would be very hard pressed to argue the last two points. Some traders seem to buy off auctions, give the car a clean and give you a third party warranty which cost them £10 to pass on to a company willing to give most people the run around enough for them to give up. On the really cheap cars, it simply is not worth the cost of time you invest to make a claim.

It use to be far worse with these wheeler dealers but a handful of restrictions and guidelines are brought in every once in a while. Unfortunately the dealers stay one step ahead.

I would cut my losses at this point, stress time and money does not seem worth it. Would just tuck a few hundred quid away and sell this one for scrap, then proceed to look online for private sellers with a full history. Does not have to be a flashy problem free unit, just that you know all the problems it does have when you buy it. Or if you are desperate, get a mechy mate to go with you to a dealer. He cant give it a full once over but he can check it out enough to get the problems most wont and could help you get a heavy drop in price (though they know dealers can just wait it out for the next mug who doesn't know, several dealers even told me this themselves but minus the word mug)
 
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stopper said:
Second hand ones don't, they just need to be "as described"
SOGA doesn't cover wear and tear either.
It's a lot different if you take a finance agreement though.
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Unless the dealer described the problems as part of the sale, then they need to be sorted under SOGA.

I bought a car which was around the point that it should have had a cambelt change, but there was no supporting evidence it had been. Dealer knocked a few hundred off and noted on the invoice that "customer to arrange cambelt change" or something. Pretty sure that would leave them covered if the cambelt went after sale. As it happened, it had been done, just not documented.
 
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