VVT solenoid fault - proving it was faulty when bought car?
Discussion
Hi all, I am hoping someone may be able to help me please.
Firstly, I have a 2017 Smart car (yes, I know, get the bantz over, it isn't even a proper car LOL!)
I bought it in SEptember from a dealership and it ran fab for three months. a slight idle but as I have never had a Smart car before, I assumed that was normal.
Since January it has been misfiring, the engine management light has come on etc. I replaced the spark plugs and two weeks later the O2 thingy (sorry) needed replacing. I literally got 5 minutes away from the dealership after its repair and the engine management light came on again.
I have been reading about the VVT solenoid and it does sound like this is what is wrong with my car.
Why would it malfunction in a fairly “young” (2017) car?
The dealership (Ford) are passing it over to Mercedes’ to repair and if the fault was present when I bought the car, will refund me my money.
But how can this be proven there was a fault when I bought the car?
I paid to have a reversing kit and sensors installed (professionally) on the car back when I got it. The dealership have alluded to the fact that this may have effed up the engine, which is ridiculous as the wiring doesn't even touch it.
Is there any way of knowing if the solenoid was on its way out when I got the car? It ran lovely for three months 🙂.
This happened with my last used 2017 car (Peugeot). It had a bad solenoid and even after it was replaced, the battery kept draining quickly.
Thank you so much.
Firstly, I have a 2017 Smart car (yes, I know, get the bantz over, it isn't even a proper car LOL!)
I bought it in SEptember from a dealership and it ran fab for three months. a slight idle but as I have never had a Smart car before, I assumed that was normal.
Since January it has been misfiring, the engine management light has come on etc. I replaced the spark plugs and two weeks later the O2 thingy (sorry) needed replacing. I literally got 5 minutes away from the dealership after its repair and the engine management light came on again.
I have been reading about the VVT solenoid and it does sound like this is what is wrong with my car.
Why would it malfunction in a fairly “young” (2017) car?
The dealership (Ford) are passing it over to Mercedes’ to repair and if the fault was present when I bought the car, will refund me my money.
But how can this be proven there was a fault when I bought the car?
I paid to have a reversing kit and sensors installed (professionally) on the car back when I got it. The dealership have alluded to the fact that this may have effed up the engine, which is ridiculous as the wiring doesn't even touch it.
Is there any way of knowing if the solenoid was on its way out when I got the car? It ran lovely for three months 🙂.
This happened with my last used 2017 car (Peugeot). It had a bad solenoid and even after it was replaced, the battery kept draining quickly.
Thank you so much.
Shulott said:
I replaced the spark plugs
Why? What was wrong with them? If the car has been maintained properly it would be very unusual to need to replace the plugs outside of regular servicing.Shulott said:
two weeks later the O2 thingy (sorry) needed replacing. I literally got 5 minutes away from the dealership after its repair and the engine management light came on again.
Things go wrong on cars from time to time. It's not the dealer's fault unless the thing they repaired has failed again.Shulott said:
Is there any way of knowing if the solenoid was on its way out when I got the car? It ran lovely for three months ??.
That suggests the fault was not present when you bought the car.Thanks GreenVBs and Normalbloke.
RE: replacing spark plugs, the engine management light came on, the car was lacking power, kept cutting out etc, and the AA diagnosed the spark plug problem. Once they were replaced, the o2 thingy was diagnosed a few weeks' later. Once that was repaired, this further problem happened (literally was diagnosed after I had driven for 5 minutes after having had the o2 thingy repaired). It seems to be a knock-on effect, hence why I thought it may be the solenoid fault as I had the same chain of events with a different car. (PS It isn't caused the way I drive btw, I have been driving since 1983 and it's only the last year I have had these issues).
Thank you
RE: replacing spark plugs, the engine management light came on, the car was lacking power, kept cutting out etc, and the AA diagnosed the spark plug problem. Once they were replaced, the o2 thingy was diagnosed a few weeks' later. Once that was repaired, this further problem happened (literally was diagnosed after I had driven for 5 minutes after having had the o2 thingy repaired). It seems to be a knock-on effect, hence why I thought it may be the solenoid fault as I had the same chain of events with a different car. (PS It isn't caused the way I drive btw, I have been driving since 1983 and it's only the last year I have had these issues).
Thank you
Shulott said:
It seems to be a knock-on effect,
There is literally no way on this earth any of us, or you can say this with any amount of certainty at all.Modern cars are a series of extremely complex systems, some of which are related, many of which are not.
On any system as complex as these things can go wrong at any time in completely random sequences.
As to whether it was a problem when you bought the car, from what you say in your post it is exceedingly unlikely.
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