Gather round children and I'll tell you a tale of woe
A few years ago I decided to change the car so I headed down to a local dealer to see what they had in. I was thinking of another Granada as I'd already had three and always liked them. As luck would have it they had none in but something else caught my eye, an automatic renault saffrane. Now I'd never heard of the saffrane let alone seen one but this looked really nice, spotless bodywork and loads of high spec items. Air con, cruise control, heated seats, audio controls built into the steering wheel, it even had a voice synthesiser. It was also £1500 which was the same amount that was burning a hole in my pocket. So I bought it. The next couple of weeks I fell in love with it, I'd leave the seat belt undone or the door ajar just to have the nice lady voice tell me off. She didn't have a sexy french accent but hey you can't have everything.
For about a year everything was ok then driving to work one morning she said;
gearbox in safety mode. Hmm whats that mean, must be low fluid level I thought as I pulled over. The level was ok so I got back in and started back up. the fault had disappeared so I carried on to work. This happened again a couple of times in the following weeks always on the same bit of road. After that it didn't occur again so I just forgot all about it.
Summer came and one day one of the lads at work came and told me there was a pool of water under my car. I went and checked and found a leak on the radiator. When I'd topped it up it didn't seem too bad, just an occasional drip so I decided to risk driving the 10 miles or so to home. It turned out to be worse than I thought and I had to top it up from local streams a couple of times but taking it steady I got it home without boiling over. As I said I'd never heard of the saffrane before so I was suprised when the first scrapyard I phoned the next day said they had two in. when I got there, not only were there two but one was on top of the other just overhanging enough at the front for me to drop the radiator straight out without even bending down. It only took 15 minutes to get it out and about an hour to swop with mine. I'm not usually that lucky but with our holiday in cornwall coming up I'd got away with it ,or so I thought.
Two days later I drove away from home and noticed a big cloud of white smoke following me, aaargh.
With the holiday coming up and the prospect of cramming all of us plus the camping gear in the wife's metro, I decided to bite the bullet and get the head repaired. I found an independent renault garage in Nottingham who said they could do it in the time and two weeks and £600 later we set off.
We had a comfortable drive down to newquay and spent a couple of days around the site and then my wife said lets go to monkeyworld which she'd been wanting to visit for ages. Now monkeyworld is near weymouth which must be about 100 miles from Newquay but with the car running so well I thought why not. We drove all the way back through cornwall and devon and had just called into the services at exeter when the oil pressure warning light came on. We hastily pulled up and phoned the RAC. The RAC man arrived about an hour later and started testing the engine. After a short while he declared that there was no problem with the pressure but that the garage had probably just damaged the sensor. Phew! We thought it was too late to carry on and decided to go back to the site. Driving back I started to notice that the car seemed to be struggling a bit on the hills. As the hills got steeper the problem got worse and worse until we were going up at about 25mph and blocking the inside lane. We just about managed to reach Bodmin and stopped there in the services. Now I'm normally an easy going person and don't get wound up to easily, my wife however is totally the opposite and she was seething. She wanted me to phone the garage in Nottingham and rip into them. Within a few minutes she had wound me up enough to do just that. The poor bloke who answered listened patiently for a couple of minutes while I ranted and raved and then hung up on me.
Just then another RAC man arrived. This one didn't bother with any checks but said the best thing would be recovery to a garage near newquay. So the car was loaded onto the wagon and we set off, arriving about 10 minutes before they shut. The garage were very sympathetic and even said we could borrow a loaner while they had a look at ours, and they brought out the oldest volvo I've ever seen. Two colours brown and rust and with a loud backfire every few miles we drove back to the site feeling as miserable as sin, we pulled up next to the tent, much to the amusement of our fellow campers.
The misery hadn't lifted the following morning so I took myself off fishing at the site pond. About noon my youngest came down and said the garage had rung and wanted me to go down. No other details. With a feeling of deep foreboding I pulled up outside and went in. The bloke gave me a big smile. "Your catalytic converter had collapsed, blocked the exhaust. We've raked it all out and it should be fine" I said I'm not usually lucky but that felt like winning the lottery. £30 and a big smug grin as I drove back to the site. I'd been expecting to have to abandon the car, abandon the holiday and go home on the train. I still feel a bit guilty about what I said on the phone to the garage though.
A year passed and the car behaved itself. I'd replaced the cat at not too much cost and with the holidays approaching again everything was running fine. We were going to cornwall again, this time with kids and foster kids and in company with my wifes sister and her family. Remembering the year before I took no chances giving the car a full service and checking everything else was sound. Satisfied we set off. We got as far as Gloucester when the car spoke
gearbox in safety mode. I couldn't believe it. I was coming to hate that bloody voice. It only ever gave me bad news!! We pulled into strensham services thinking stop the engine and the fault will reset. but it didn't. So it was back on the phone to the RAC. As it was so early in the morning we sat and waited in the car park for two hours until they turned up and then another half hour for a recovery wagon which he said would take us back to the depot. We all piled into the cab and he set off. 200 yards later we arrived at the depot which was at the back of the services. They soon realised they couldn't do anything and offered us the option of recovery to our destination. We're going to newquay I said not expecting them to take us that far. No problem he said, in fact he seemed quite pleased to be going even though it was still about a 4 hour drive So later that day we arrived at the site on the back of the recovery lorry, much to the amusement of etc etc . At least it saved about £50 of petrol.
The car was still drivable although safety mode meant it was fixed in 3rd gear. I remembered there as a renault main dealer near newquay on the A30. Normally I wouldn't go within a million miles of one but I thought they'd have a service dept with the proper diagnostic equipment so against my better judgement I gave them a go. The man at the service dept listened as I told him the problem. Its not the fluid, I said, thats been checked. Ok leave it with us they said. The following day my brother in law drove me back down.
"Well" said the man at the service counter "We've changed the fluid and thats not the problem"
"Yes I know, I told you that yesterday. So what is the problem?"
"We don't know , we don't have diagnostic equipment for that"
"this is a renault service department isn't it. why didn't you tell me that yesterday"
He basically just shrugged...and then charged me £100
I'll let you imagine what was said next.
Later at the site my brother in law was a star and suggested that we hired an mpv for a fortnight and split the cost, even though their car was fine. At least this gave me my first experience with an mpv, a new VW sharran, and planted a seed in my thoughts for later. At the end of the holiday we were still left with a car stuck in third gear. Our RAC subscription had run out and I had joined up with a different breakdown company so I thought we would set off and see how far we got. In the event by following the coast road and avoiding most of the hills we made it all the way back without incident.
Back home I'd decided the car was going to the great scrapyard in the sky even with more than a twinge of regret because despite everything I still loved driving that car, more out of curiosity than anything I phoned an auto gearbox specialist who I'd heard good things about. The guy told me to nip in and see him and he would let me Know what the problem was as he at least he had proper diagnostics. The works were just behind meadow lane in nottingham near the notts county ground and I dropped in the following day. I wasn't intending by any means to have anything done to the car and certainly wasn't going to waste any more money on it, but this bloke was fantastic. He'd found the problem within a few minutes and explained the process of reconditioning in detail giving me a full tour of the works. He raised my enthusiasm to the point of me telling him to go ahead with it. I had to tell my wife when I got home.
The work took about two weeks and then because I wasn't fully satisfied with it he took it back and redid it again at no more than the agreed cost. He also gave me a years guarantee for the work. All was happy again and I had another year of enjoyable motoring. Three weeks after the guarentee expired the gearbox started playing up again. That really was the final straw. I took the car down to a dealer and despite me telling him of the gearbox problems he allowed me a trade in. The car had one final trick though, As I was stood waiting for them to finish a valet on the new car one of the mechanics came and asked me to move the saffrane as I'd left it blocking the gate. So in front of the mechanic, the dealer and the valeter I jumped in to give it one final drive. I put it in reverse.... and the bloody thing wouldn't move. One final gallic
up yours.
So notwithstanding a large dose of my own stupidity:-
Remember never trust anything french
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