I bought my Fiat Ducato 2.3-litre campervan three years ago when it was two years old with just over 5000 miles on the clock. Last October we came back from a holiday in France at a mileage of 20,000. It was due for a service but I decided to SORN it and take it off the road until March 2013, then give it a service. In January, I decided to run the engine. It started no problem, but after a few minutes it stopped and would not start again. A local garage told me it would cost £5000 - £6000 to repair. I rang Fiat and they told me to take it to a Fiat garage in Wrexham. They told me that the cambelt had slipped and caused the damage and it was going to cost me £3000. Is this a common fault with this engine?

I had the work done as we had booked to travel to France in April. The van was repaired two days before my crossing. As I drove home the engine undertray fell off and I had to fix it back in place myself. In France we had a breakdown due to loss of coolant from a pipe not clamped tight enough. A French mechanic repaired it. We are now in south of France until the end of June. Do I have a case against Fiat or the people I bought the van from? I will be asking the garage to pay for the cost of the repairs in France but does “sale of goods” come into it in terms of reasonable length of reliability, etc