Last week, I bought a Vectra Life 1.8 estate from a car supermarket, for a friend. It won't be poicked up by my friend for another week or two, so I have been using it a bit to shift some big things which don't fit easily in my car, as well as taking it off to get parking sensors fitted.
Mostly it seems fine: quiet, smooth-riding, comfortable, very spacious, simple to drive (though huge to park). It has no handling vices that I have found, but it doesn't feel brilliantly planted on the road. Nothing serious, just rather less precise than my Almera, and less of a driver's machine than a Mondeo. But that's no surprise: this isn't intended to be a fun car, and wasn't bought as one.
However, there are two things which seem odd:
1/ The central locking works on the boot, and both the front doors, but not the two rear passenger doors. Is this some bizarre cheapskate thing for the base model? Or is something broken? (I've never before seen or heard of a car which has remote central locking, but not on all doors) I tried turning on and off one of the child safety catches, but it made no difference, and I can see nothing in the owner's manual about this.
2/ There's a slight and intermittent roughness in 4th gear, and only in 4th gear. When travelling between about 40/45mph and 60mph, the gear level vibrates enough to cause a mildly unpleasant rattly resonance in the plastic trim which surrounds the gear level (it;s probably the ashtray which is vibrating). On a 35-mile trip yesterday, I changed in and out of 4th gear and it was reliably present every time I used 4th, but only when under load (nothing when I lifted off the gas). However, I couldn't replicate it today, tho I didn't reach that speed very often on the backroads I was using (I'm going to try again on the mway later this evening). The car is an ex-hire vehicle, so I'm inclined to wonder if something was damaged by some don't-care hirer crunching the gears, but I'm also wondering if I'm being a little paranoid. :-
Any thoughts on either issue?
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 22/01/2009 at 19:14
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The central locking should work on all doors and although i have no idea as to what the vibration problem could be, it definately shouldn't be there, so there must be a problem.
I would get it back to the supplying supermarket for them to rectify asap !
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Thanks Andy, will take it back.
BTW, I selected the wrong item from the dropdown box when posting: the car is a Vectra C, not a Vectra B
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Changed, but this is best asked over in Technical Matters. Post up the year (a required criteria for TM) and one of us will do a further edit and move it across. DD
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 22/01/2009 at 19:06
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Thanks, Dave. It's an 08 registration.
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With a car this new, take advantage of the 3 yr warranty. As said, the central locking should work all doors. However, unless the default setting is changed, pressing the fob once only unlocks the drivers door; two presses unlocks all the doors + boot. But I don't think this is the problem if the front passenger door and boot are unlocking with the remote fob.
ps, moved across - obviously ;o)
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Thanks, Dave.
No matter how many times I press the plipper, it has no effect on either of the rear doors. So that needs attention.
I also checked the transmission judder again. It's definitely present in 4th when accelerating uphill at speeds between 40/45mph and 60mph, and it is also present in 2nd when accelerating uphill over 3000rpm (which is somewhere over 30mph). It's more pronounced in 4th than in 2nd, but is quiet enough to be masked by having the fan heater on setting #2 or higher, or by having the radio on low. So it's not very loud.
I tried to feel vibration by holding the underside of my fingers very lightly against the gearlever, and the vibration can definitely be felt in 2nd and 4th, even before it's audible. However in the other gears I can neither hear nor feel anything.
I guess it's back to the supermarket, which I'm rather dreading. I have no idea what sort of setup they have for repairs (there was no sign of a workshop at their premises), and after a very negative experience collecting the car I'm rather regreting dealing with them. My instinct is to put a description of the problems in writing, which I will give to them by letter if they take the car in for repair (so that there can be no argument about the nature of the problems). If it does come to rejecting the car, there may be a problem with getting back the £225 I spent on getting reversing sensors fitted at a Vauxhall garage :(
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The car is in warranty - don't waste your time going back to the car supermarket - just take it to a local Vauxhall dealer.
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May be worth disconnecting the battery for 5 mins to see if that restores the central locking fault to the rear doors.hth
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The car is in warranty - don't waste your time going back to the car supermarket - just take it to a local Vauxhall dealer.
If they say that the gearbox issue is due to misuse, where would that leave me? That would be an issue for the supplier (i.e. the supermarket), and I'm a little concerned about the possibility of being caught in the gap between the two -- Vauxhall saying "it's not covered, cos its been abused", and the supermarket saying "you should have let us look at it first".
Sorry if I'm sounding unnecessarily nervous. I'm just trying to think through the possibilities for how this might pan out.
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It's quite unlikely that the problem will be anything inside the gearbox itself - possibly a mounting or something loose in the remote mechanism allowing some noise and vibration to be transmitted.
I suspect that if you did go back to the supermarket, they'll send you to the dealer anyway. Perhaps 'phone them, and check. I would be *really* surprised if they take it back and do anything to it themselves.
Even if the supermarket did do anything, I wouldn't trust many outside the dealer network to do any significant electrical work on these cars (including disconnecting the battery!) - as already hinted at, these cars place great reliance on their CAN bus systems.
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