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@Bicycle_Repair_Man
FYI I purchased an '08 Renault Koleos 2.0dCi Privilege last September, with the intention of running it until it costs too much. My mileage is 15-17k a year.
I've got an open thread on this forum to provide feedback on the experience - link below
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=118933
The thread is overdue an update, due to the fact that the car is proving brilliantly faultless. Just a standard service, an a/c regas to remove the 'scavenging' whistle sound and lots of comfortable miles.
These cars are dark horses, and good value. Yes, the badge is Renault - as is the design. but the development was by Nissan and the assembly is by Samsung in South Korea. My example feels very sturdy. It's also excellent off-road.
Currently getting 41mpg average, running exclusively on Shell V-Power.
Will update my thread in due course - it's 1 year birthday is Sep 16th, so should do it then. .
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If it has in the past and now is doing mainly reasonable length trips on faster flowing roads, then as long as it was/is well cared for, then most diesel cars should be fine. The problem is that many were at some point used for repeated short journeys from cold or scrimped on as reagrds servicing them annually, even if the manufacturer 'recommends' longer service intervals.
Doing so just stores up BIG trouble for users and subsequent buyers later in their life, normally at around the 5-7 year mark. Given most are not worth that much anyway by then, a big failure requing four-figure repair bills make them uneconomic to carry out and writes the car off, especially as for some issues like DPF, they can come back very quickly should the car not be used sympathetically as described earlier. The same goes for people who buy older, high spec petrol cars that come with equally complex and thus expensive parts.
Too many people forget to factor in a big bill or two every few years and wonder why they have to scrap it so soon after purchase. A £50k car (when new) costs a LOT more than a £10k (when new) to run, even if the flashy car now costs £10k second-hand. I've seen this sort of thing catch (main younger) colleagues out who buy 6-8 yo German sports hatches/saloons thinking they've got a great bargain for the £7k they spent on buying it. One scrimped on the servicing because he couldn't affor annual services (a diesel BMW), knew it was leaking oil, only to find one morning his engine blew up on starting it and deposited all the engine oil on the drive, ruining that too.
Unless you know 100% of a diesel car's maintenance and usage history, IMHO its a lottery whether you get a decent, reliable, cost effective life out of it. AT least with standard petrol-engined cars you really only need to know its maintenance history and give it the once over when you view/test drive it for driving experience, damage, corrosion or signs of clocking/high wear.
1 year isn't really that long, so you may have been fortunate, but at least you're going about ownership the right way by hedging your bets and using super diesel and having it serviced/maintained regularly and replacing worn parts. Many people don't and just cross their fingers - fine for an old banger costing £500, not so good if someone shells out £5k plus (not necessarily you - just a general comment) for a car that could go pop at any time.
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I did my research. The car was one previous owner, full main dealer history, with all the detailed bills and even the credit card receipts. One big bill at 2012 for £1K, which details particulate filter work. The car came with 84K on the clock, equating to 8K per annum - not ideal but the address and the adresses stored in the nav address book suggested it went regularly between W4 London and Swindon (where I bought it).
Well aware of the pitfalls of used DPF diesels, but was willing to take the plunge on
a) the provenance of this particular car
b) my use case of 15K+ per annum
c) the underappreciated quality of this un-typical Renault model, and its very attractive used prices therein.
d) M9R chain-cam engine Renault-Nissan alliance engine, which seems to have a good reputation - it's been put into the latest Koleos, X-Trail and lots of commercial vehicles
e) a nearby Renault indie garage, with a good reputation. I visited them before buying the car. They've since serviced and inspected it and proclaimed it in very good condition for it's age.
I had no intention of purchasing any used VAG diesel, even at lower 'dieselgate' used prices, due to the poor reputation.
If something does go expensively wrong sooner rather than later, I'll consider myself more unlucky than foolhardy. Will keep my thread updated, as this website loves customer data!
For those with £3-£5K to spend, it's hard to ignore a used market awash with diesels. Yes, it's a minefield, made more minefieldy by the change in MOT law around DPFs and emissions. However, for those with large expected annual mileage, the time to research, and the understanding that a good used buy should be maintained with the right fuel and good care (once saves a fortune in depreciation so this is not unreasonable) there is still some good cars out there.
Edited by Sulphur Man on 28/08/2018 at 19:14
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The problem with only seeing service receipts and MOTs etc is that unless you absolutely trust and/or know the former owner(s), you can't always tell what type of mileage they did - only the total. I know people with diesels who do 10k+ a year but its 95% urban driving of 30mph and below, so no passive regens, which may mean when they come to sell the car, its on borrowed time and they got lucky.
That being said, some diesel-powered cars are more susceptible to the DPF clogging up and, as we've seen with tales about some Land Rovers, the design of the system, including its proximity to the engine can make a huge difference - HJ himself said that the Honda diesel seems to be less susceptible than most. Perhaps yours is as well. Unfortunately, unless there's lots of faults, its often as much down to the driving patterns of its owners than anything else, hence why buying an older diesel car is rather a lottery in my view.
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The servicing in most vehicles is pretty minimal. It is really just oil changes. No one replaces parts unless they actually go wrong.
Truth is most diesels are pretty reliable. There are some shonky makes and designs out there (mainly German) but if it hasn't got 17 lights on the dash, an injector isn't leaking and the DMF isn't rattling when you buy it if you drive it with some mechanical sympathy it will probably do OK.
DPFs are widely overblown in this forum and seem an obsession. Some designs give issues but most are fine regardless of how driven. If they do block, most can be cleaned for under a hundred quid.
There are just as many bad petrols to avoid out there. Basically, if you avoid anything from VAG and probably Mazda as well you night do OK.
The wear on ALL used cars is down to how they are driven - petrols as well and it is down to more whether people can actually change gear and have some mechanical sympathy more than driving patterns. It is amazing how you can take two identical cars, same mileage, same year, same servicing and one drives like a bag of old bolts and one drives like new. This is one reason I hate one owner cars - at least with 2 or 3 owners ones you have a change one might have been able to drive!
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The wear on ALL used cars is down to how they are driven - petrols as well and it is down to more whether people can actually change gear and have some mechanical sympathy more than driving patterns.
A lot of sense in what you say, pd. I think my present 207SW diesel has been the most reliable vehicle I have owned - for almost ten years now, since buying it as an 8-month-old ex-lease. In that time it has consumed two sets of tyres and one of discs and pads, along with regular servicing, oil and filter every 7-8K. It always starts, still with the original battery (and exhaust).
I'm not claiming that it is all due to wonderful mechanical sympathy, but that must help. My previous car (306 HDi) was similarly reliable. A buyer's difficulty is in assessing the mechanical sympathy of a previous owner, especially if buying from a trader.
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The problem is that Mazda's 1.5 (formerly 1.6) diesel is a bought in PSA-Ford derived engine used in those makes and Volvos. Not sure who designed their 2.2TD though, but like with many diesel engines, much of the problems crop up when people drive them mainly from short urban trips from cold.
The forced regen at a dealership may 'only' cost £100 or so, but if the car is used unsympathetically (as many diesels are), then they might be going in for this 'treatment' every few months - cancelling out the better fuel economy over a petrol engine, and likely raising the occurence of a terminal failure of the DPF (often costing £0000s to replace) far more.
As problems with DPFs are cumulative, all this means is most people 'get lucky' and pass on more serious and/or frequent problems to the next owner when they dispose of the car at 3-7 years old. Non DPF cars, even those driven on short trips in urban areas, lasted a LONG time (engine wise), whereas today's crop (from the mast 10-15 years) certainly won't without a serious injection of cash either regularly or in one go over their lifetime.
I regularly used to see cars like the one I learned to drive in, a Pug 205 1.9D well over 10 years after they went out of production. How many equivalent cars with DPF-equipped engies do you see on our roads of a similar age - not many - those that are left are almost all petrol engined ones. Yes, that might be partly due to Pugs (and some others) of that era 10 years ago not being particularly sound in other aspects, but I think the DPF issue is an under-reported one, as many people running 'old bangers' cannot afford £100 bills(most probably would spend that on general servicing pa) every few months (if at all) and so just scrap the car when the DPF gets clogged.
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The trouble with older diesels is the drivers. One misfuel and they may sell it.
Buying an elederly diesel can mean buying a misfuelled car being sold to avoid expensive bills in teh future. No way to know.
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To be honest I deal with loads of 10ish year old diesels and I can't recall one ever being killed by a DPF failure.
DPF cleans (not regens) can usually bring them back to life but even new ones are not always that expensive. A DPF+Cat can be £200 for a mid-range car but so can a couple of tyres and some brakes.
Old diesels are usually killed by much the same things as old petrols. Usually a MOT failure not worth fixing.
I've got a 2006 Focus 1.6 diesel outside taken in px. I'm waiting for the scrap man to pick it up. Done 180k on the "diesel of doom" (which is often a good engine). Engine is perfect, gearbox is perfect, clutch is perfect, DPF is perfect. Drives really nicely. It needs two tyres, rear bushes, a spring, front bush for another MOT and is simply not worth bothering with.
Modern diesels can certainly have issues and are certainly more issue prone than a very simple naturally aspirated petrol but they are not *that* bad and more often than not the issues are caused by thick garages (including many main dealers) not being able to diagnose faults and throwing expensive parts at them.
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To be honest I deal with loads of 10ish year old diesels and I can't recall one ever being killed by a DPF failure.
DPF cleans (not regens) can usually bring them back to life but even new ones are not always that expensive. A DPF+Cat can be £200 for a mid-range car but so can a couple of tyres and some brakes.
Old diesels are usually killed by much the same things as old petrols. Usually a MOT failure not worth fixing.
I've got a 2006 Focus 1.6 diesel outside taken in px. I'm waiting for the scrap man to pick it up. Done 180k on the "diesel of doom" (which is often a good engine). Engine is perfect, gearbox is perfect, clutch is perfect, DPF is perfect. Drives really nicely. It needs two tyres, rear bushes, a spring, front bush for another MOT and is simply not worth bothering with.
Modern diesels can certainly have issues and are certainly more issue prone than a very simple naturally aspirated petrol but they are not *that* bad and more often than not the issues are caused by thick garages (including many main dealers) not being able to diagnose faults and throwing expensive parts at them.
Shame about that Focus - I bet if that car was on the continent or North America (as well as in less developed nations) it would've been kept on the road because of cheaper maintenance costs and, IMHO, more knowledgeable/skilled staff, whether at main dealers or indies.
I agree that over here, all too often the default response, especially from main dealerships, is for 'plug the OBD tester in to check for fault codes' and 'that needs replacing' rather than proper diagnosis and decent quality, cheaper repair jobs rather than wholesale replacements, who are money spinners. No wonder most cars get scrapped in the UK far ealier than abroad.
Even the (often reasonably valid) argument that modern, complex cars are uneconomic to maintain because indie garages cannot afford to pay for all the extra training and specialist tools is blown out of the water when other so-called 'rich' western nations seem to get along perfectly well maintaining these cars to a decent standard for 20 years or several hundred thousand miles.
Its noticeable that most of the helpful YouTube videos for maintenance tips come from mechanics (indie and main dealer ones) and knowledgable DIYers in the US, Canada and mainland Europe, very few from the UK. Its almost as though most UK 'mechanics' are little more than glorified basic technicians working by a tighly defined script just doing servicing and basic repairs, a bit like our useless call centre staff who always have to rely on 'supervisors' because they have no clue when the computer doesn't give them a decent answer.
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The trouble with older diesels is the drivers. One misfuel and they may sell it.
Buying an elederly diesel can mean buying a misfuelled car being sold to avoid expensive bills in teh future. No way to know.
I don't think that is a serious worry compared to almost anything else you like to imagine having happened to an 'old' car. You can always buy a pig in a poke, that's why they keep getting cheaper until the price bottoms out. If nervous buyers worry about everything and anything that MAY have happened, they will never buy. You have to take the plunge with some confidence, which means finding out all you can.
Too often the old mantra of 'costs more to fix than it's worth' is applied without thought. The Focus mentioned by 'pd' above could be fixed for an MoT fairly cheaply, and would provide a decent car for a new driver. Too much throwaway society IMHO.
Edited by Andrew-T on 29/08/2018 at 16:00
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Plus think of all those perfectly servicable (and probably MOTed and running) older cars that were scrapped when the government's 'scrappage scheme' was running a few years ago. What a waste just to kick start new car sales. Nothing environmentally friendly about that either.
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Plus think of all those perfectly servicable (and probably MOTed and running) older cars that were scrapped when the government's 'scrappage scheme' was running a few years ago. What a waste just to kick start new car sales. Nothing environmentally friendly about that either.
I was still driving car transporters during that farce, the company i worked for had large numbers to shift, some of the cars i picked up it was criminal they were being scrapped, one and low owner lowish mileage cars in really good running order.
A well thought out system would have had an exchange process, so some rotting rubbish could be sensibly disposed of and the better ones kept running, but since when did common sense and our leaders have anything to do with one another.
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