Should I get rid of my C5?

[evoke]

Bought in early Feb for just under £4K - 2008 new-shape C5 - to provide cheap motoring for a couple of years. High miles but masses of service history and full printout from leasing company who owned the vehicle. Took the car in to a indie workshop a couple of weeks later for a healthcheck. That was the beginning of my wallet being completely emptied.

Cost of car in early Feb: £3850

12/02/13 - (Went in for a healthcheck) New discs and pads all round, new front tyres: £800
15/03/13 - (Went in for an oil leak) Replace clutch, flywheel and crank seal: £1300
28/03/13 - Change oil and oil filter at Citroen dealer: £100
05/04/13 - (Went in for a brake fluid change) Flush brake fluid, replace lower ball joints: £550
30/04/13 - A/C regas: £50
20/05/13 - (Car dumped fluid all over my driveway) New power steering pipe and fluid: £650
22/05/13 - Wheel alignment: £40
04/07/13 - Rear offside light cluster - wiring loom repair: £400

TOTAL SPENT ON REPAIRS SO FAR: £3790 - almost what I paid for the car!

What do I do? Shall I get rid of it or enjoy it until it needs new tyres/clutch, etc?

[White-Horse]

Keep it! You spent lots of money on it. Everything done on it, apart the DPF, nothing else can go wrong:D

[evoke]

What else could go wrong? Just had MOT done on it and four advisories:

1. Offside front anti-roll bar linkage ball joint dust cover deteriorated

2. Nearside front suspension arm has slight play in a pin/bush

3. Offside front suspension arm has slight play in a pin/bush

4. Nearside front axle swivel joint has slight play

Are any of those wallet-emptying issues. They're just advisories for now but I suspect they'll be fails in a year's time.

[Stewart(oily)]

I think you are paying too much for the labour, where are you located ?

[evoke]

Greater London (West)

[VertVega]

What do I do? Shall I get rid of it or enjoy it until it needs new tyres/clutch, etc?

I would say, keep it.

If you can do simple jobs like oil and oil filter change, spark plugs replacement and etc. with your car, you can save some amount. On the other hand I know also people who take their cars to dealer even for headlight bulb change.

Don't worry about the clutch, they should last quite long, of course depending on the drive. My previous xantia had 252k miles with original clutch when I sold it I told about this to the new owner and he tested the car to see that it rides without any symptoms. By the way I don't understand why they changed also clutch and flywheel. New crank seal would have been enough. I had the same crank seal operation with my Xantia and clutch was in good shape. So we put it back again.

With my current C5 II, I made already 22 k miles and during this time:
- Workshop (service) costs: 0 EUR
- I changed oil 3 times, with engine flush
- New spark plugs (Bosch)
- 2 Headlight bulbs H7 type (1 one of them fell in the headlight case, future spare part )
- Before winter, I'm planning to change gearbox oil also.

[Mandrake]

Bought in early Feb for just under £4K - 2008 new-shape C5 - to provide cheap motoring for a couple of years. High miles but masses of service history and full printout from leasing company who owned the vehicle. Took the car in to a indie workshop a couple of weeks later for a healthcheck. That was the beginning of my wallet being completely emptied.

I'm going to be a little bit less generous than other respondents and suggest that they saw you coming!

Cost of car in early Feb: £3850

12/02/13 - (Went in for a healthcheck) New discs and pads all round, new front tyres: £800

Maybe I'm a bit out of touch with modern cars, but £800 for two tyres ???

We're talking about a Citroen family sedan here, not tyres for a Lamborghini... I was feeling hard done by when I paid about £220 fitted for two new Michelin's on the front of my Xantia last year. (And then had to replace one a few months later due to an unrepairable puncture) £800 for a pair of new tyres boggles my mind. Can I ask what brand/type they are - are they Citroen's original fitted type or something else ?

Also new discs at 5 years old doesn't seem right either, unless the mileage is massive. (you don't say how much "high" mileage is) Time was many decades ago that brake discs lasted the life of a car - 20 years or more. Not nowadays but 5 years seems awful short.

15/03/13 - (Went in for an oil leak) Replace clutch, flywheel and crank seal: £1300

I'll give them that one, still seems quite high (not knowing the engine specifics) but a clutch is a reasonably big job. However were you experiencing any clutch problems when you took it in, or did they "find" problems with the clutch when they had it in ?

28/03/13 - Change oil and oil filter at Citroen dealer: £100

Oil and filter change is bread and butter money for garages - easy work and high margin. "Money for jam" is another phrase. If you're willing to do this yourself you can cut that down to around £30 depending on what grade of oil you choose. Not difficult with a sump plug fitting, a big plastic tray, a strap oil filter wrench and a pair of overalls.

05/04/13 - (Went in for a brake fluid change) Flush brake fluid, replace lower ball joints: £550

Again, had you noticed any problems with suspension clatter, steering wander, or was there an MOT failure on the lower ball joints ? If not then they've conned you into doing a job that probably wasn't necessary when you took it in for something else. Ball joints can go for a very long time with a small amount of slack that is barely noticeable while driving, so unless its an MOT failure or clattering over bumps it didn't need doing. Not an easy job but labour charge still seems too high.

30/04/13 - A/C regas: £50

Can't complain about the price of that, however was the A/C working ok before hand ? If it was then again, conned into doing something that didn't really need doing yet.

20/05/13 - (Car dumped fluid all over my driveway) New power steering pipe and fluid: £650

Without knowing how expensive the pipe is that seems awfully expensive, however for all I know it might have been a pig of a job to replace. Still too expensive though.

22/05/13 - Wheel alignment: £40

The going rate for wheel alignment is around £20-£25 so too high here as well.

04/07/13 - Rear offside light cluster - wiring loom repair: £400

How many hours labour was that ??? Wiring repairs can be tricky in that it can be hard to pin down exactly where a break in a complicated wiring harness is, but the repair once found is not difficult. £400 seems way too expensive to me to repair a non-working light cluster.

TOTAL SPENT ON REPAIRS SO FAR: £3790 - almost what I paid for the car!

I think you've been well and truly taken for a ride, not all of that is "repairs" though, tyres are consumable items not a repair, discs, pads, oil change and filter are all consumables too.

What do I do? Shall I get rid of it or enjoy it until it needs new tyres/clutch, etc?

Now that you've spent all that money it would be silly to ditch the car if its running well as you'd never get your money back, however I'd suggest that before your next trip to your local indy that if you have any problems with the car you post here on the forum first and get some opinions on likely cost etc so that you walk in fore-warned of what a job SHOULD cost, and that you also strongly resist the urge to say yes to additional work that you didn't initially take the car in for.

Garages love to find other jobs that need doing on a car that you didn't take it in for - that's how they make a lot of their money. They're not necessarily scamming you in that those jobs may actually need doing at some point, however they're often not at all urgent, for example brake discs that may be fine for another 10,000 miles or more. On any car over a few years old you can always find work that could be done if you look for it but is non-urgent.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist myself and like everything to be just so, but with an old car (mine is 15) I know where to draw the line and accept that not everything is going to be in perfect condition and not every little thing needs money spending on it!

[evoke]

Car is a 2.2 diesel, nearly 139,000 miles on the clock. Yes, I think I was scammed by the indie I first took it to for a healthcheck. The indie was a friend of my best mate so I trusted him. The car was not exhibiting any problems when it went in. The indie found problems with it, despite declaring it as fault-free after the first visit.

I've been thinking about what to do all day and agree I should keep it. It's new new just about everything now so won't need wear-and-tear items for a long time.

However, could someone be kind enough to indicate the size of the job for my MOT advisories please?

1. Offside front anti-roll bar linkage ball joint dust cover deteriorated

2. Nearside front suspension arm has slight play in a pin/bush

3. Offside front suspension arm has slight play in a pin/bush

4. Nearside front axle swivel joint has slight play

[Stewart(oily)]

All done at the same time that might take a couple of hours.

[Chlorate]

ARB drop link isn't a difficult job. Few bob for the part, couple of bolts, done in an hour.

Suspension bushes can be a bit tiresome as can bottom ball joints, although being a 2008 car nuts and bolts won't have transformed into RBoKs (rusty bits of kack) yet.

Surprised your bottom ball joint is showing up as an advisory, did you not have those replaced recently? They're supposed to last some years.

To be honest I wouldn't worry about any of that (except the ARB joint, you should be able to buy a replacement boot for that)- advisories are advisories and one mechanic's slight play is another's excessive is another's fine. Case in point, I had a wheel bearing making a hell of a whine not long ago, dropped it into a Halfrauds autocentre (who are licensed to carry out MoT inspections) who declared the wheel bearings were fine (even though I told them otherwise repeatedly) and got upset when I wouldn't let them do the other, easier, work they wanted to do instead...for a grand total of over a grand. Took it to a better mechanic some time later who replaced it without question (by which point the bearing was positively dangerous and resulted in me calling the AA).

139,000 is a heck of a lot of miles for a 2008 car! Was it a taxi in its previous life?

[evoke]

^ Lower ball joints were replaced recently (April this year). Are these related to any of the advisories? I called the indie who replaced the lower ball joints and then certified the steering and suspension as fault-free and read out the advisories to him. He said none of them would have been related to his work of replacing the lower ball joints or dropping the subframe and putting things back together after the power steering hose was replaced. The car hardly gets driven - maybe 50 miles a week - so i'm surprised at four advisories after the indie has done so much work on it.

I specifically asked the indie to check the front and rear suspension and steering components in preparation for an MOT and he said they were fine (he's an MOT tester, by the way). So i'm not sure if the MOT station I took it to were just trying their luck or whether the indie who did most of the work on my car has done a bodge job.

The car was a company car in its previous life. It was maintained by Lex Leasing and had a full service history with all the additional work logged by Lex. Most of the work carried out has been wear and tear stuff but I think I have been taken for a bit of a ride!

[evoke]

A breakdown of my lower ball joints replacement costs:

Labour: £240 + VAT (4 hours)
Parts (lower ball joints 2008 C5): 2 x £72 = £144 + VAT

Having had a good Googling session this evening, I think I need to have words with the indie as replacing them does not take 4 hours and the parts are a lot cheaper!

[addo]

You'd be saving money to take a day off and run the car up to Lighty.

[Chlorate]

Are these related to any of the advisories?

Front axle swivel joint is just another name for the bottom ball joint. Lots of different names for it, but they have to use the MOT machine's special language

£60 an hour isn't too horrifying, I've seen/been charged much worse. A cheap garage will charge closer to £35 per hour.

2 hours either side for bottom ball joints is somewhat understandable - more so in older cars where the blighters don't want to come out.
Mine ended up being 4...but the upright did have to come off the car completely for a short trip down the road to see a machinist with a oxyacetylene torch.

[craig_s_b69]

saw you coming fella, i would say to treat this as a lesson in life and don't just open your wallet at a garage, all the above prices are well over the top to start with , take a short course in mechanics as well as most of this is DIY stuff and you could have spent a few hundred at max apart from the clutch that wasn't causing any problems any way ?? all the rest apart from regas fine @ £40-50 and the tracking again fine at £40 could have been done at home in a couple of hours