At the end of May this year my 75 year old mother was driving her Fiat Punto (2003, 25,000 miles) sedately along a suburban road, just having started up again after traffic lights. There was an explosion from under the bonnet. A terrifying experience, with the fire brigage being called and parts of the clutch strewn over the road and pavement, but fortunately my mother was not injured. The clutch had blown up. Repairs had to be carried out, necessitating a new gearbox, starter motor, water tank, some electrical parts and clutch.
My mother had to pay for these extensive repairs, under protest. The Fiat dealership where she got the car were totally uninterested in the case. The people at the different Fiat dealership which repaired the car were rude and completely disorganised. Fiat customer services were totally uninterested in the case, responding to my mother's letters and telephone calls with apparently random and not very polite comments indicating they hadn't read her letters and were uninterested in grasping even the bare essentials of the case.
I have two questions:
1. Is there anything we can do to get redress?
2. Does anyone have any idea what might have caused this incident? The car was being driven carefully and appropriately. My mother has been the only driver. She doesn't coast along for miles with her foot on the clutch or anything like that. The car mileage is low.
Thank you.
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A Major mechanical failure on a 5 year old car isn't going to be covered by any makers warranty that I am aware of. Does the car have a full FIAT dealer service history? If so you might be able to negotiate a 'contribution' to the cost, if you can actually find someone to talk to about it! Starting at dealer level would be my best guess but any gap or inconsistency in the service history would not be helpful to your case
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 05/10/2008 at 12:06
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Sorry, but i agree that there is no chance of a mechanical part, and a consumable part at that, being covered at 5 years old, especially as 5000 miles a year says mostly town work and stop start driving.
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The car has a full service history - not with a Fiat dealer, but with another reputable service centre.
Certainly, the car was no longer under warranty, but this was a serious incident, which could have been much more serious, and would seem to me to merit some kind of serious consideration rather than being dismissed out of hand as not of interest to Fiat.
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A few more details may help get you some feedback;for example,had work been done on the clutch,flywheel or starter before this happened or was it totally out of the blue? Were there any noises beforehand? Normally for a clutch to fail in this way,it would need to be seriously misused or violently over-revved,so any information you can come up with could formulate an answer to go to Fiat with.
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There had not been any work done on the clutch or starter and there weren't any noises before the explosion. The incident came totally out of the blue. Certainly my mother hadn't been seriously misusing the clutch or violently over-revving. Just before the explosion happened, my mother said she had had some difficulty in getting the car into second gear, but that was the only warning about this incident.
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Didnt manage to find reverse by any chance? Just before 2nd?
Its not an obvious fault or a common one!
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Now i have come across this before but unable to pass judgement without seeing the bits. The engine would have to be seriously overeved or incorrect selection of a gear to cause such damage unless , " the differential exploded in the gearbox & the sun & planet wheels normally come out with huge force smashing the clutch to bits on the way out!"
This used to be common on some peugeots & was often mistaken for an exploding clutch. I wish her well in her pursual but it may prove expensive. Sometimes even the best make of car in the world can give you a big hit in the wallet. Vote with your feet & don't buy another Fiat .
I doc
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"Vote with your feet & don't buy another Fiat"
The clutch on my 15 year old Cinquecento failed at over 104k miles and it was always driven in town.
The problem is that the clutches on the old Punto were made of cardboard!
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We do have some photos of the damaged parts. The Fiat dealership which repaired the car was supposed to take photos of the damaged engine parts while still in the car, but did not (along with many other things they did not do). They did eventually take some photos of the damaged parts after they had been taken away from the car.
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I would say that getting redress now will be difficult.
You do not have the broken bits and although "under protest" the work carried out was agreed to.
Was the car serviced annually? If not than it may not even qualify for a full service history.
Given the extent of the damage and the vehicle age it would have been prudent to consider scrapping the car. Perhaps the dealer should have explained to your mother that this was a catastrophic failure and that the repairs would be very expensive and perhaps uneconomic.
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