"Jase" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@i56g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... Dear all.
I had the engine electronics warning light come on intermittently with about 20% loss of power. No pattern to when it would come on, sometimes every few seconds, sometimes a day or two. It reset when the engine was restarted. Booked into Vauxhall dealer 27/12/06 for diagnosis. No fault found. They cleared the log so a fault code could be identified after it next occured. Following day I returned to dealer after return of fault. They still couldn't rectify the problem after reprogramming the ECU. The car was then booked in for a third time 04/01/07 for full diagnosis. 'You need a new ECU sir, £600' We got the car back at 11:00 on Tuesday. It is since a poor starter and on top of that, Yesterday (Wednesday) on my wifes way to work, she noticed the Exhaust emission warning light was on (not flashing). I have now booked the car in again for tomorrow but I can't help think that the dealership have failed me in more ways than one. Firstly, when I originally booked the car in 27/12/06 they only had a skeleton staff and did not do a full diagnosis. This was also the case on the second visit 28/12/06 when they reprogrammed the ECU. Should they have booked me in if they did not have the staff to do the job? Secondly, it's 30 miles, 3/4 hr each way so as of tomorrow, the forth trip that'll be a total of 240 miles plus road tests and a lot of my time. Despite this, they would not budge on the price of the ECU. Thirdly, and this is where I could use your help. If the car has a damaged probe/catalyst/other, is it due to the original fault? In the 'emergency running programme' that the ECU used, does that put excessive demands on other systems i.e. exhaust and emissions?
Couple questions. Have they actually fitted a new ECU? And is this the 1.6 8V engine, with the ECU roughly in front of the battery?
If it is, then the ECU is a common fault on them, but it generally fails completely, so the vehicle doesn't run. And it costs no where near £600. I can't remember the actual price of hand, but it's just as cheap to buy a new one, than it is to send the old one away and get it repaired. Being the cynic that I am, I'd guess the dealer has priced the job to replace several components, as they're too lazy to be bothered spending some time actually diagnosing the fault. And rather than take the risk of the suspect component not curing the problem, they'll just replace the whole lot. I've seen this done a few times, and it seems like a good idea to the dealer/fitter (I'd use technician, but that's too high a status for the idiots that do this), until the problem actually turns out to be a broken wire (it's nice watching them squirm when confronted with explaining to a major customer how they just spent a lot of money without fixing anything).
Off course, if it's one of the 16valve engines, the ECUs for them are more expensive, but I've never seen any fail. I have seen them exhibit signs of failure when certain actuators fail, but they sort themselves out again once the problem has been sorted, and the faults cleared (classic one was the EGR valve used to stick, which would generate a fault code, but for some strange reason the ECU would stop switching power to it, and carrying out the checking procedure would end up with a faulty ECU as the problem. But fitting a new EGR valve, and resetting the ECU would get everything back in working order.)
But I'd personally be finding somewhere else to carry out a diagnostic check.