The German Un-Reliability Thread

I saw a "Panzer Tank" in a layby on the A325 today........ I think his cambelt had snapped !!!!

Cheers To All
Peter

Originally Posted by symonh2000

Has anyone had a broken down honda yet?

Saw a Honda Shuttle being winched up onto the back of a recovery truck this morning.

07 black Golf GTI driving like his arse was on fire....and boom. Big cloud of smoke and debris on the road.

He looked quite upset.

at work (i work at tesco part time as a dot com driver :P) we have merc sprinters. 6 of them. ok so no it isnt a car i suppose but german reliability wise.. lets just say we never have all 6 vans at one time it seems anymore. I mean they are 05/55 plated sprinters. the oldest pushin 140k, the youngest about 107k. but aye, stupidly unreliable, but i think that has to do with the maintenance compnany 'pullmans' not maintaining them properly, and using salvaged parts to repair them.
anyway, common faults:

auto/semi-auto boxes are pretty much useless, never seem to work, jumps out of gears etc, usually back in for a gearbox replacement or flywheel replacement. and they always seem to manage to stall if u have to plant the foot, like crossing a dual carridgeway

Head gaskets. couple have gone, plus one new turbo on one of them aswell i think. had one bellowing smoke the other night, the offical sprinter mechanic who came and checked it out outside a customers house gave his educated diaglostic of 'its ****ed'. hole through a piston, pushin in oil or something?

remote central locking. one van locked one of the drivers out with the keys in and the engine still running! ended up having to pan a window in

overheating has always been a problem with a couple of the vans, oil leaks are common and just general bits n bobs.

lots of bits fall off all the time, most dont even have proper door handles anymore lol.

in all fairness though, they go through 'hard' miles. always against the clock means they are ragged to hell. but i tell u, the replacements iveco we get is absolutely shocking.. they should not be allowed to make commercial vehicles.. u wont have seen poor build quality till u step into an iveco! infact, we had a 56 plate one, and it didnt even have self cancelling indicators..

anyways, thats all i have for german unreliability. im only 19, and i've only ever had 2 puntos and now my 147.

while I was at Tesco dotcom it was the Iveco's that had to rescue the Mercs, failure to start, needing a jump start etc

a lot is to do with how they are looked after and driven, sadly they get thrashed by people who do not care about them as if they are their own.

anyone seen a broken down Honda yet?

yep, Jenson Button every other Sunday.....

you would think that with Ferrari being so reliable in F1 that would change perceptions about Italian cars somewhat, but no.

Our MK5 Golf GT (TDi) is having starting problems at the moment and predictably the stealer can't find a problem

just to redress the balance, my brother has a 1998 Mercedes E300 turbodiesel estate with 170,000 miles on it. totally 100% reliable in every single way, built like mercedes should be, just before they started penny pinching, it still feels like a new car to drive. respect where respect is due, its an amazing vehicle.

and to redress again, my neighbour has had Two Merc E class estates, the K reg the autobox, and its replacement an S reg had the front suspension collapse.

Both while on holidays with all the family and fully laden.

I seem to have a thing with water pumps. 3 year 3 months old Audi A2 waterpump failure - cost £800 to fix everything. Replaced with new A2 pre-registered, waterpump failed at 19k miles, replaced with 3 year old Mondeo, waterpump failed after owning it for 6 months. Hopefully my soon to be Spider LE won't have a water pump failure.

My Audi A6 estate, full Ecu failure...not cheap so I gave the thing away

Originally Posted by philoldsmobile

just to redress the balance, my brother has a 1998 Mercedes E300 turbodiesel estate with 170,000 miles on it. totally 100% reliable in every single way, built like mercedes should be, just before they started penny pinching, it still feels like a new car to drive. respect where respect is due, its an amazing vehicle.

Just an observation - you're missing the point of this thread, which is to redress the impression that german cars don't break but Alfas do.

May I also take this opportunity to point out that it is often German components that let Alfas down..........

Originally Posted by Arna Man

May I also take this opportunity to point out that it is often German components that let Alfas down..........

What he said.. I have only had 1 alfa breakdown and that was caused by a Bosch Crank sensor. (On my 145 QV)

Idle control valves, MAF's, vapour recovery solenoids, all fail regularly and are made by bosch.

Originally Posted by purple145

and to redress again, my neighbour has had Two Merc E class estates, the K reg the autobox, and its replacement an S reg had the front suspension collapse.

Both while on holidays with all the family and fully laden.

Front spring failure is a known to Mercedes but hushed-up problem on E-Klasse generation 1993 - 2000.

Tonight, I clocked a 2008 BMW 3-Series ahead of me on the way home. It was about to crest a hill; it was trundling and it had it's hazards on. 'Ok', I thought, 'it has seen or knows of a problem that I can't see', so I slowed, flicked on my hazards, and gently crested the hill expecting to see what it was the BMW was warning us of. Hmmm. Nothing, nada. Empty road yonder BMW. So, I turned off my hazards and looked (when I could) at the crawling BMW's tyres. None had deflated, so I could only conclude the reason it was going so slow was because for some reason it had reverted to 'limp home' mode.

Anyway when it was safe to do so, I used all the Polo's bhp (*laugh*) and passed it. In fairness, most new cars go wrong in the first three months; maybe this one just got a bit confused and shut down a system or two?

g

Jsut heard from the garage servicing my wife's BMW 318 estate. It needs a new clutch and flywheel at around 50,000 miles. Not very impressive. Three of my Alfas have exceeded that mileage without any clutch problems (and I didn't do that many miles in the fourth one I have owned).

Cheers,

Nigel