Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness

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Thu 25 Feb 2016 15:02
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - Katie82

Please can anyone help, I am going mad! We accidentally put too much oil in our Zafira in January-way too much and the engine seized. Our local garage replaced the engine with a second-hand Astra SRI engine that we were told was compatible for our Zafira. The car now runs but has almost no power and the manifold gets red hot after a few minutes. We have taken it to 3 different garages including a Vauxhall dealer, however none of them can tell us the problem, the ECU has been tested and come back fine.

Is it possible the Astra engine was not compatible? The garage put some auxilliaries from our Zafira engine on to the Astra engine when they replaced it-is this ok? The engine had the same model number as our Zafira. We do not know what to try next, please help!

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Thu 25 Feb 2016 16:34
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - FP

I don't know the answer to your problem, but I'm wondering why you are running around from garage to garage when the responsibility for solving the issue lies with the local garage which did the engine swap in the first place. Presumably they are the people who told you the engine they put in was compatible.

Get them to face up to their responsibility.

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Thu 25 Feb 2016 19:09
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - elekie&a/c doctor

No power and exhaust getting red hot tends to suggest there is valve/ignition timing issue or possibly the exhaust system has a blockage.

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Thu 25 Feb 2016 20:13
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - Katie82
The timing has been checked and adjusted a few times and seems not to be the problem. I think the exhaust has also been checked, but thank you for helping, I'll tell my husband your suggestion.
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Thu 25 Feb 2016 20:11
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - Katie82
We bought a second hand engine on eBay based on the model number given by the garage. We phoned the supplier on eBay who checked it with our number plate and said it would fit in our Zafira. The garage fitted the engine however used some of the auxiliaries from our Zafira engine. They then told us to go to Vauxhall as the car had a fault but they didn't know what it was. The Vauxhall garage looked at the fault codes but also could not tell what the problem was and quoted us for another brand new engine. We took it back to the original garage and asked them to look over the work they had done but they argued that as the car came in not running at all, we can't prove it did not already have this new fault. So now we have a car that runs but does not go over about 40mph and gets too hot too quickly. We don't know whether replacing the engine with another Zafira engine will fix the problem or not??!!
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Sat 27 Feb 2016 10:13
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - Big John

As others have said if the exhaust manifold is getting red hot then it's usually valve timing (I had this happen with a Ford Capri 2.0 pinto after engine change - low on power and manifold glowing red! - was only one tooth out)

However , whilst it was low on power it would drive much faster than 40mph.

Could I suggest another potential issue - has the new engine got a faulty wasted spark coil pack , this would only give you real power on two cylinders (hence 40mph) and would throw unburnt fuel towards the catalyst (this would get rahter hot!) - Just a thought.

New coil pack cheap (worth changing anyway) but if this has happened the catalyst my be cream crackered now (it can melt the core!) but these aren't very expensive these days

Edited by Big John on 27/02/2016 at 10:19

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Sat 27 Feb 2016 12:26
Vauxhall Zafira 2012 1.6 - Zafira Madness - bathtub tom

If it's got fault codes, it may help if you tell us what they are.

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