Holden Astra - Nightmare

[Iconic Bionic]

  revheadrobbo said:

for one Opel and Expensive Daewoo are GM..... enough said....

So feel free to wear a chev badge then.

I.B.

[GCTXR6]

:sniffle: mate I see this many times a week I work for rac wa in the workshop and as a patrolman on the road,

these are among the most towed cars the 98 on astra ,vectra, barina , timing belts ,water pumps ,keys jamming in ign barrel ,immobilisor problems I can go on

the people that drive them are constantly winging about the last tow truck ride and this shouldnt happent to a new car

the quote is about right for the repair ,mate get it fixed and go and buy a corrola ,camry ,subi honda mazda etc

Edited 19/12/08 08:45 PM by GCTXR6

[Scrotus]

Im not suprised GCTXR6, I just wish I had of sold it 6 months ago. oh well. Im thinking corolla or mazda 6. Corolla have quite a good rep, so probably go one of those;. Oh and keys jamming in barrel - yep have had that several times.

Edited 20/12/08 02:32 AM by Scrotus

[Smoke them tyres]

Yeah the interference style engines are great when it goes wrong.

Where people seem to get into trouble with cam belt engines is that they replace the belt but not the tensioner. The tensioner bearing seizes, then the belt teeth get stripped off the belt and carnage.

In my experience, tensioners should ALWAYS be changed with the cam belt. And the tensioners don't need a massive tension spring.....only a light one to stop belt slap.

I changed the belt on the wife's '92 Suzuki Swift at 188,500km's. It still looked like it had some life in it left too. But the bearing was definitely on it's way out. Suzuki use a light spring which is used to apply some tension to the belt (about 5-10 kg's) and then it is locked in place.

[MADF6]

We had a 1999 astra and it was a complete lemon too. 2 engine rebuilds and the timing belt broke at 170K after we replaced it the first time. The coolant clamp busted and coolent sprayed all over the engine and warped the head the second time...

That is just the start and I could go on but I'd depress myself (2 computers, alternators, ....). The worse thing to come out of it was the way we were treated by Expensive Daewoo and their complaints department. Our car was in a Indooroopilly (Westpoint) and was in the shop for 8 weeks while we had to rent another car for the missus. It was extremely stressful and we were treated so poorly. When we heard nothing back from the complaints department I rang and got the 20 year old kid I spoke with originally and he said "yeah, I haven't done anything because I've been on training"... I said why couldn't you have given our case to another person who is available? Ahhh!

Never again will I buy Expensive Daewoo because of the way we were treated... I'm not bagging the product as we have only owned the one Holden (which turned out to be a lemon) but the service was inexcusable.