Deleted member 74601
Guest
Hey guys, bare with me on this one, it's going to be a long one.
I've been having an ongoing problem with my car, that the dealers have been unable to 'diagnose' despite numerous attempts. This has been ongoing for over 20,000 miles now, and started last November. I drove down to London, left the car parked up for 2 weeks and drove home. All was fine, until my next fill up. Since then, my car has had low power, which has got gradually worse, going from intermittent to 'there most of the time', and is also suffering from other symptoms. Over time more symptoms have presented themselves, and some have been ruled out.
As it stands these are the symptoms I'm seeing:
Low Power - The car feels more difficult to move away in first (also kinda like the pedal has a deadzone), and there is a lot of feedback through the clutch pedal (vibrations in time with engine RPM). When you put your foot down, at around 1,500RPM (which is always where I've driven from) the car takes about 2 seconds before it starts to feel like it's on boost, and slowly builds up to boost. When it feels correct on power, I don't get this hesitation. It also feels as though something is 'blocked' somewhere. It feels like trying to blow through a pipe with 3 holes in it, but you've covered up 2 of the holes and only left one open, so there is less air flow and this feels restrictive at motorway speeds.
More engine breaking - The car is not rolling as freely as it used to. I noticed this because there is a hill near me where, before this problem, if I was doing 30mph in 3rd, and took my foot off the accelerator, the engine breaking would keep me at 30mph. Now, with this problem, the engine braking is slowing me down on the same hill.
Difficulty starting - This wasn't there at first, but came later, and at temperatures of around 5.5ºc and less, the car is harder to start in the morning. Some mornings it's taking at least 3-4 seconds to tick over, where as usually it would start straight away. The longest it took was 7 seconds, then it spluttered, tried for another second and kicked into life.
Clutch - The clutch sometimes feels.. strange. It feels as though the bite is engaging at the normal point (about halfway up the pedal movement) but it feels as though the bite is long, i.e I have to keep moving my foot up to near the top of the pedal before the clutch fully engages, which makes the bite point feel high.
Worse in cold weather - The above is all worse below about 6ºc, up near 10ºc it feels a bit better.
So far, it's been to the dealers 6 times, up until the last time, they said nothing was wrong. I.E they were scanning for fault codes and sending me on my way. I got SEAT customer service involved, and after a couple more visits, the technician at said dealers said to me 'I think it could be the turbo vanes sticking'. They told me they would speak to SEAT about the next step to take. I then get a phone call from SEAT telling me that the garage has reported nothing wrong! I argued with them but all the guy was saying on the phone was 'we have to trust the garages'.
I then took it to another garage, who didn't think there was a fault, but wanted to take the car in for a couple of days to physically check everything over. SEAT refused this as my warranty ran out that week, and as no definite fault was found, they wouldn't cover this under warranty. They would only cover good will if a fault was found. This meant I would have to pay ridiculous dealer labour rates to get it checked over, with no guarantee they'd find a fault, and leaving me out of pocket.
I'm now thinking about going to an independent, but was just interested to think why you guys might be the problem.
P.S Now you know why I hate dealers.
I've been having an ongoing problem with my car, that the dealers have been unable to 'diagnose' despite numerous attempts. This has been ongoing for over 20,000 miles now, and started last November. I drove down to London, left the car parked up for 2 weeks and drove home. All was fine, until my next fill up. Since then, my car has had low power, which has got gradually worse, going from intermittent to 'there most of the time', and is also suffering from other symptoms. Over time more symptoms have presented themselves, and some have been ruled out.
As it stands these are the symptoms I'm seeing:
Low Power - The car feels more difficult to move away in first (also kinda like the pedal has a deadzone), and there is a lot of feedback through the clutch pedal (vibrations in time with engine RPM). When you put your foot down, at around 1,500RPM (which is always where I've driven from) the car takes about 2 seconds before it starts to feel like it's on boost, and slowly builds up to boost. When it feels correct on power, I don't get this hesitation. It also feels as though something is 'blocked' somewhere. It feels like trying to blow through a pipe with 3 holes in it, but you've covered up 2 of the holes and only left one open, so there is less air flow and this feels restrictive at motorway speeds.
More engine breaking - The car is not rolling as freely as it used to. I noticed this because there is a hill near me where, before this problem, if I was doing 30mph in 3rd, and took my foot off the accelerator, the engine breaking would keep me at 30mph. Now, with this problem, the engine braking is slowing me down on the same hill.
Difficulty starting - This wasn't there at first, but came later, and at temperatures of around 5.5ºc and less, the car is harder to start in the morning. Some mornings it's taking at least 3-4 seconds to tick over, where as usually it would start straight away. The longest it took was 7 seconds, then it spluttered, tried for another second and kicked into life.
Clutch - The clutch sometimes feels.. strange. It feels as though the bite is engaging at the normal point (about halfway up the pedal movement) but it feels as though the bite is long, i.e I have to keep moving my foot up to near the top of the pedal before the clutch fully engages, which makes the bite point feel high.
Worse in cold weather - The above is all worse below about 6ºc, up near 10ºc it feels a bit better.
So far, it's been to the dealers 6 times, up until the last time, they said nothing was wrong. I.E they were scanning for fault codes and sending me on my way. I got SEAT customer service involved, and after a couple more visits, the technician at said dealers said to me 'I think it could be the turbo vanes sticking'. They told me they would speak to SEAT about the next step to take. I then get a phone call from SEAT telling me that the garage has reported nothing wrong! I argued with them but all the guy was saying on the phone was 'we have to trust the garages'.
I then took it to another garage, who didn't think there was a fault, but wanted to take the car in for a couple of days to physically check everything over. SEAT refused this as my warranty ran out that week, and as no definite fault was found, they wouldn't cover this under warranty. They would only cover good will if a fault was found. This meant I would have to pay ridiculous dealer labour rates to get it checked over, with no guarantee they'd find a fault, and leaving me out of pocket.
I'm now thinking about going to an independent, but was just interested to think why you guys might be the problem.
P.S Now you know why I hate dealers.
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