They are too complex

Is it working okay now?

I assume so as the customer has not told me otherwise, and I expect he would if it was not OK

As it has a very low mileage, and the dealer found the battery needed replacement, is there a chance that it has been jump-started in the recent past?

Chris

The battery was actually fine, they were just guessing at a battery and did put his battery back on. AFAIK it has had no jump starts, I think the owner would have told me if it had. I will quiz him next time I speak to him.

Sounds like they did a lot of guessing. ;-)

Seems to me these days that garage mechanics can only fault find if the 'computer' tells them what the fault is. Then throw new parts at it chosen at random if that doesn't work.

So are you suggesting that the main dealers have no clue when "something" goes wrong? I can believe it, of course. Was the guy expected to pay for the "non-repair"? I bought a new XR2 in 85, gearbox clunked in 2nd. I had to almost come to blows with the main dealer manager to get it replaced. Hmmmm, I was thinking of buying a Fiesta Titanium X, not sure now.

Recent article from the Mail says electrical faults are increasing.

"Costly electrical faults on cars more than three years old have increased by 66 per cent over the last five years."

Personally I've only just found a garage I totally trust after decades of motoring.

Andy C

Are we getting close to the label on a new car reading: "Do not dismantle, no user-serviceable parts, return to factory"?

It was certainly my impression that this main dealer (not actually the one I recommended, but it was closer) did just take haphazard guesses as to the fault. The customer said he was going to complain and hopefully get his old throttle body put back and a partial refund for the first repair, I do not yet know if this happened, but I suspect it was unlikely to occur. Generally fords are much better screwed together now than in 85, but I would buy something genuinely Japanese for real quality, epecially if I was buying new or nearly so.

+1 (or dump in a crusher?).

Quite enjoyed the first new James May prog, I liked the idea of corner shops carrying spark plugs and belts for the Lada (was it?). And I think you could do a full engine strip with the supplied toolkit.

But it's been the same with domestic boilers for over 25 years.

I fitted a fanned flue boiler in my folks house about 1991. Had to get a corgi man to do the final gas connection and commission it. It has a lighting sequence, fan on, wait for pressure switch signal, open pilot gas valve, start igniter, wait for flame detection, open main gas valve. About 10 years ago it stopped working. I opened the control box, took out the control PC card, flipped it over and found a dry joint in the middle of a big brown bit of PC card. Soldered it up and it's been fine ever since. A "qualified" heating engineer would have had to replace the card at a cost of £125, that's as far as the factory repair instructions go. They know about plumbing, mains electrics and gas installation but are not electronics engineers.

It was known by the maker to be trouble but I thought they would have fixed it in the 2 years after I left. I had a field trial of a different model in 1988 and my boss gave me a spare control card. Never needed it (touch wood as I still have the boiler and spare card) as it was a different design that was never any trouble.

I have a Potterton EP2000 heating programmer also c1988 (I did 4 boilers around then, mine was a complete system). At a few years old it started switching the boiler on, then cutting off instantly and losing the LCD display but only on heating and not for hot water. Changed the battery, no effect. Opened the box, having removed the anti-tamper sticker from a screw head. Did a bit more visual inspection and found a leaky capacitor. It was a relay holding circuit while the diverter valve changed over. Replaced it with one I recovered from some other old electronics device and that's been going fine ever since. Again the only recourse of the heating engineer is to replace the whole unit. If it's become obsolete then a major re-wire to a new controller is needed.

Heating engineers are not competent to service the electronics to component level.

Car "technicians" are not competent to service auto electronics to component level. Not only that but they can't even test them properly, so have to resort to substitution.

You'd have thought that since we're surrounded by electronics that kids would want to learn about them. And perhaps make a career out of it. But apparently not.

I have a good story too: about 25 years ago I bought a Miele dishwasher, absolutely fabulous machine, ran for about 15 years used every day at least once, then it started to get temperamental, sometimes stopping mid program. There was no obvious fault as far as I knew, so I called miele service, they came round, plugged in a laptop and said that the motherboard was faulty and would cost about 500 quid to replace, obviously I declined their repair bill and paid 50 odd quid call out, I carried on using the machine till it would not complete programs at all. I then took a look and metered the power supply unit, turned out that as it got hot voltage dropped and cut. I wired in an old wallwart of about the right voltage and that machine ran till about a year ago, plastic bits inside had started to disintegrate and one day there was a bang from it and a burning smell, I then retired it and bought another miele. The best bit about the story is that I complained to miele about the incorrect diagnosis and they refunded my call out !!

Couldn't agree more ! Mine's cost me £185 give or take since 1978 + the usual protector and silencer for a while. The savings are grossly exaggerated.

The saving here from changing from a BE RS type with as sophisticated controls as you could have with that, to a weather compensated condenser is a reduction of about 25% of gas use per year. Had I paid the silly amount most seem to charge for supplying and fitting it would have taken quite a while to recover the capital cost. But by shopping around for the best price and fitting it myself it's paid for itself in about 4 years.

.. but the vast majority of people can't do that and therefore they pay for more boiler swaps, suffer more faults, along with the inconvenience. On your figures I would save £137/year but how much would I have to put away for each boiler change? I'm just saying, that there's nothing like as much in it as they would have us believe.

Which one did you buy?, I am looking into installing central heating, from what I can find out the vaillant ecotec 637 with the weather controls looks to be pretty good. Any thoughts?

And boiler fixers are not engineers

Changing a boiler is no more difficult than installing a new bath. It's also worth doing some research into boiler reliability before just accepting what a plumber (or anyone else) wants to fit. That choice is likely decided on price alone.