Evora S fails to start

[Bibs]

I wonder if this is a loom issue......

 

As with your car, that can be diagnosed in 1 minute thanks to the error codes.

 

Where there are no error codes, then it's much harder to find out the problem as you can see with Jerry's car. 

[TBD]

has anyone ever checked compression on all cylinders of the engine? Sometimes it helps to go back to check the basics.

[Bibs]

In Feb, see post #43 above.

[Barrykearley]

Has it ever been misfueled???

[SwissToni]

Never misfuelled. It actually spent most of its life (in my ownership) running on German Aral 102 Ron fuel. I always warmed the car up properly (I am an engineer by education) and it was never driven unsympathetically or tracked, by me. The car never wanted for anything. It was always serviced by main dealers (at considerable cost) and all advisories/recommendations were always completed. This is part of the reason why I am so angry. The car has never been out of the care of Lotus. Even the wheel refurb and new Pirelli tyres were done through them. The first 2 Lotus agents were average at best (one failed to get the recall parts for necessary work in the 3 weeks they had it and the other had the car for much longer than they should, although this was partly due to Lotus failing to supply headlights).

But the current agent is dismal. Worse than hopeless, as indicated by the high turnover of staff and customer service managers. I am not an unrealistic bloke. I have owned 6 Alfas, 2 Land Rovers, a Ferrari and various 60s/70s British and Italian cars. I accept foibles and mediocre main dealer service as standard (little alternate option with newish cars). However, my treatment at the hands of this particular Lotus dealership (and Lotus' failure to grip them) has been unprecedented.

My final actions will depend upon whether the car can be fixed by the dealership within the 12 months (4 weeks left). If it cannot, I will trailer it to a specialist and go into battle with the dealership and possibly Lotus. If it can be fixed, which currently seems unlikely, I will look at the bill, look at the discount for the garage's failures and look at the Lotus goodwill payment. If I am not satisfied (as I suspect is likely) I will take legal action against the dealership and possibly Lotus. I will also use the considerable free time that I now have to publicise my experience online and use whatever methods I can in order seek redress.

The sad thing is that I really wanted to love Lotus and the car. I take an almost perverse pride in not buying cars based upon reliability and can laugh off most rattles and glitches. But I simply can't 'laugh off' this level of expense and incompetence.

Edited June 20, 2015 by SwissToni

[YvoTuk]

Swiss, in case you want to start legal action, just keep in mind you can only take it on to the dealership.
Lotus cars are no contactpartner for you so anything you throw at them is a waste of time.

When you want to go that route, make sure you do this after resolving the problem by a third party and have that well documented, prefferably by a third party assessor who is registered as an expert (don't know the exact name in English, but we would hire such a person to assess and monitor the work and who would be believed without a doubt by court)

Sorry to hear of all those problems!

Don't know what it can be, I've got to say I was rather surprised I found my NA running badly (misfiring and all that) earlier this year which was caused by the grand total of three fooked spark plugs

[SwissToni]

Thanks YvoTuk! The garage has blamed Lotus UK for their lack of dealership support in terms of diagnostics so I thought that they could potentially be held partly responsible. The main problem with this is that I am not convinced that the dealer is being completely honest about who is to blame for the multiple failures - the garage, of course, blame Lotus for not sending test-parts (ECU) quickly and for not sending a technical rep.

Well, there has been progress, of sorts. A week ago the garage were looking at the butterfly (throttle body - I assume) as the cause. I told customer services manager number 3 back in August that I suspected this, or the plug socket into it as a potential fault and that I discussed this with customer services manager 1 (it was similar to a boxster issue I had and the connector is apparently a repeat offender on multiple Lotus forums for certain fault codes similar to mine) but that customer services manager 1 dismissed this and I bowed to his technical experience. I have (a week later) been told by customer services manager 3 that I actually need a new engine harness loom. This is irritating. They were specifically told that the starting problems occurred after a heavy downpour and that the throttle body connector being cleaned and refitted briefly solved the problem.

My bill, so far is £2435.52 + VAT for the catalyser repair and a service (that I assume is going to be completed after the repair). Plus £1380 + VAT for the investigation and loom repair. So about £5,000 in costs for parts, VAT and labour. Add in the year that it took them to find this fault and I am looking at about £4,000 in depreciation. However, this car has been supposedly fixed before, so I have limited faith. Either way, I am down at least £9,000 and a load more grey hairs.

I am also concerned regarding the cats. The catalysers were originally replaced due to poor running, which will surely have affected the new catalysers also as the poor running has not been fixed for the last 4/5 months. Surely if they damaged the first set, the second set may also have been damaged? Or did they ever really need replacing?

I am also unsure as to why they feel I should still be paying for the clam removal.

The saga continues. Like Star Wars but with more anger and a more irritating dark side.

[philcool]

I've just read the whole sorry saga and there was me getting punchy about an intermittent battery fault that turned out to be a damaged cell really hope you get a speedy conclusion good luck. 

[SwissToni]

Thanks - I have already replaced the battery (at my own expense), but old/new it never held more than 10 days charge. Like the intermittent cruise I took these as 'Lotus quirks' and was happy to live with them. The recent dealer service, not so much.

I fired out some questions to the dealer and got the following responses:

Q. Why were the clams replaced when Lotus directed that wiring checks were the most likely cause?

A. Clams were removed to check the timing as previously discussed and this was required. (Note: no further explanation given).

Q. Who did you discuss a goodwill payment with at Lotus - please give a point of contact so that I can discuss it with them.

A. Assistance has been discussed with Lotus and declined. (Note: no further details given).

Q. Who do you feel takes the majority of the blame for the unacceptable delay.

A. Part of the delay I have led to believe (sic) was also due to awaiting parts.

Other questions were also partly answered, as ever, most were ignored.

The dealership have changed their line regarding goodwill payment and have stated that Lotus (who supposedly provided discounted parts according to a previous service manager) have point blank refused any goodwill. Despite a Full Main Dealer Service History on the car

I am contacting Lotus to ask for their side as I cannot believe that they would be so shoddy. I am clearly not paying a main dealer for their superior diagnostic capabilities or customer service. Surely keeping the vehicle inside the network should give me some goodwill? I have spent thousands prior to this disaster with Lotus on servicing and now many thousands more. It is low mileage and was only just out of warranty when delivered to the dealer for repair. The fault is not due to an act of God, wear and tear or abuse. Why, if they are a quality brand, do they not stand by their product? The wiring loom was faulty and they won't even give me that for free.