Astra - clutch start.

Man of Honour
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In a nutshell, I've knackered five Astra police vehicles since January. The ones we use are latest models and to start them the clutch must be dipped before it will start. On the five occasions I've had problems, its been the same thing. The vehicle will not start and when recovered to workshops, Vauxhall are contacted and a code is given which gives an electronic reset which rectifies the problem, so I'm told anyway.

While one was being recovered, I asked about it to the fella and he said it was a common problem with them. As for my colleagues, I have been mercilessly ribbed and am now known at the clutch ****er. :/

So car experts, is it a technical fault that I have been unlucky enough to have five times ? Any Astra owners had similar problems ?
 
Associate
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There have been 2 cars in my team's fleet that have had mystery sensor faults on the gearbox that VX have been unable to fix resulting in the cars going back to them as the lease company got annoyed and another one the cambelt tensioner failed at 7000 miles or so(but dealer just slapped a new belt and tensioner on without checking the engine at all).

All the other cars but mine have had issues with the start stop system which I guess could be related to clutch sensors or similar?

No problems with mine yet at ~20k except the comedy fuel consumption though so I'll look forward to this happening :p
 
Soldato
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There is a clutch sensor that is known to fail. Switch fails, ECU doesn't recognise that the clutch is fully depressed and the car doesn't start .With the way Police vehicles have to be used it would be a likely suspect, however, unless the code supplied effectively deletes that routine from the starting procedure I can't imagine this is the problem.
 
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Don
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So you're one of them that rags a car all over the place eh? :p
Let this be a warning to us all thinking of purchasing an ex police vehicle :p ;)

Vauxhalls... they're made from cardboard parts man, saying that tho it's not an issue I've come across before and lal my brother and his mates drive are vauxhalls.

You guys still getting VXR style specs with the plain interior and exterior?
 
Soldato
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Judging by the amount of things I've repaired on my brothers Corsa, I'm not surprised. You pretty much have to replace the EGR valve every time you put petrol in it!

Your stumped now, I bet they break it and then somehow arrange it so your the next to take it out so they can rib you some more! Clutch &*^%$, haha what a nickname!
 

4T5

4T5

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So car experts, is it a technical fault that I have been unlucky enough to have five times ? Any Astra owners had similar problems ?

:p < That is me thinking about how much **** you are getting off the other Rozzers. :D


Also I think it's You, nobody can be that unlucky to **** the same thing up 5 times in a row. :p
 
Caporegime
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So you're one of them that rags a car all over the place eh? :p
Let this be a warning to us all thinking of purchasing an ex police vehicle :p ;)

Vauxhalls... they're made from cardboard parts man, saying that tho it's not an issue I've come across before and lal my brother and his mates drive are vauxhalls.

You guys still getting VXR style specs with the plain interior and exterior?

The police patrol vehicles are made to order by GM's own Special Vehicles production line. They fit all the comms and camera equipment required by the police avoiding the need to have a 3rd party do it - thus resulting in a bunch of stuff covered under vauxhall warranty and anything the 3rd party did not.

The cars you refer to usually start out life as a bog standard SRI, then are upgraded with the 2.8T from the elite (which was 246 hp as opposed to 280hp in the VXR) then get extras like upgraded brakes and bigger wheels to accomodate them. People refer them to as having VXR specs but in fact they were never VXRs, just a hotch potch of parts from the GM parts bin to upgrade them.

These will be on the traffic police / fast response cars which will be the vectras. The astras are just panda cars so don't get the go faster bits

You'd think the coppers would get a better fleet of vehicles than bloody vauxhalls!


its all about price, and about public perception of wasting public money. West yorkshire police have replaced a lot of their traffic cars with BMWs for example, but still use the astras for panda cars. I read somewhere that BMW did offer up a 1 series for this contract, but didn't win it as the police were wary that despite being priced competitively with the Vauxhall Bid, the public would see replacing their entire fleet of volvos and Vauxhalls with BMWS as wasting money, without knowing the full financial details of the contract that meant it would have been anything but.

opinions from people like this

http://www.avforums.com/threads/police-marked-bmws-why.266560/

Driving through my town centre today I couldn't help noticing a marked BMW 5 series police car.

Why do the police need to drive around in a marked BMW? Does anyone know the justification for that?? :( Do they get them free or something?

Surely it would make more financial sense to have a nice Mondeo or equivalent.

My local policy also have an unmarked Mercedes used on a well known bypass to catch speeding vehicles, but that's another story.

Joe public doesn't understand that the deals that BMW ,Vauxhall, Skoda, Ford etc.. do with the police bear little resemblance to the showroom prices paid by the punter.
 
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Soldato
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I never had a problem with the one on mine.

Only problem I had with it was that people kept driving in to it.

3 times it was hit in the company car park.
 
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Caporegime
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Fair points. Just Vauxhalls are well dodgy :p

their reliability isn't the best. But that isn't the only concern for the fleet buyers. These usually manage quite large fleets as well since local police forces often club together in a single consortium to place bigger orders and get bigger discounts.
 
Soldato
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I read somewhere that BMW did offer up a 1 series for this contract, but didn't win it as the police were wary that despite being priced competitively with the Vauxhall Bid, the public would see replacing their entire fleet of volvos and Vauxhalls with BMWS as wasting money, without knowing the full financial details of the contract that meant it would have been anything but.

Yep, I've heard this from a few people from different areas (unless it's just the same story being repeated over and over). Shame really, but you can imagine The Sun et al having a field day about "Cops bombing about in luxury cars paid for by YOU".

The other one I hear/read often is "They should be supporting British manufacturing, not German!".
 
Caporegime
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That's just it, if the police force did replace every car with a BMW, you know the Sun would go quoting the recommended retail price us punters pay and saying what else you could buy with the money, because the full details of the contract would never go public.

So the papers would just use their own "comparison" figures and give the impression the police are wasting tax payers money. This isn't an issue however when they're buying vauxhall astras.
 
Man of Honour
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At Frodders, I'm going back to 2001 when I did my response driving course but back then, 5 series Beemers were available to police for about 12k less than book price. I can't imagine it's got any worse as so many forces use the 530 now so there are bulk discounts to be had.
 
Man of Honour
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So you're one of them that rags a car all over the place eh? :p
Let this be a warning to us all thinking of purchasing an ex police vehicle :p ;)

Vauxhalls... they're made from cardboard parts man, saying that tho it's not an issue I've come across before and lal my brother and his mates drive are vauxhalls.

You guys still getting VXR style specs with the plain interior and exterior?

That's the thing matey, I don't rag them about. There are 'flight' recorders in all vehicles now that record speed, gear, revs, cornering laid and so on so only an idiot would thrash them when not responding and even then they shouldn't be strarskied around corners etc.
 
Soldato
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You've probably just got big feet and are breaking the clutch switch which will be high up on the arm of the clutch pedal somewhere.
 
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