Hi guys,

I was hoping for a bit of advice. In March of this year I purchased an April 08 Astra CDTi Sri privately, it had a full VX service history (full maintenance package) with 54k miles on the clock. It had a few weeks left on the warranty and I had it MOT'd during the warranty to replace anything under it if necessary. However there were no problems and it was given a clean bill of health.

Then 3 weeks after the warranty expired the Air con compressor unit failed, nearly £600 worth. However, I fought my corner with Vauxhall as it was so soon after the warranty expired and as a non serviceable part that you dont expect to replace after 3 years they agreed to pay 90% of the cost which was nice of them.

This weekend however was the big bang! My wife was driving down the motorway on Sunday and with a bang the car lost drive. A mechanic friend has since taken a look on a ramp and confirmed the gearbox diff has gone which has also knackered the driveshaft (i'm no engine expert but I think this is the problem, its fairly major though). It's now in Vauxhall being stripped down at a labour cost of £330 just to find the fault before we look at options. FYI the car has 59.9k on the clock.

I have since been reminded about a friend of mine who had the exact same model and year of car as mine who had exactly the same problem at 50k miles at 2 years old. He had his replaced under warranty. I've also seen of others with similar problems with the same 1.9 engine/gearbox.

I'm yet to hear back the results of the stripping down of the gearbox but when I do obviously the first thing I will do is approach Vauxhall for a contribution. This is clearly a manufacturer fault and not driver error or wear and tear. I'm 3 months out of warranty.

Does anybody have experience of the same situation, either with Vauxhall or another manufacturer? Have I got a leg to stand on so to speak? They must know this is a known fault and I can get hold of my friends paperwork of when his went bang.

Any advice would be greatly received, without any VX contribution I'm looking at a bill running into thousands which I don't think is fair if they cant build a car to last 3 and a bit years. So as you can imagine I'm keen to look at all options.

Thanks in advance.