Cars with faults that put you off buying them...

[buzzer]

What cars have you fancied buying and the done a bit of research to find they have an inherent fault that puts you off?

For me there have been a few...

I didn't buy an Elise with a K series due to head gasket failures.... I bought one with a Toyota engine

I looked at three BMW Z3Ms to find all has rear diff mounting problems... Great car but I could not live with a car with such a poor design defect

[deltashad]

I didn't buy an MGF because they had head gasket issues... oh, I forgot, I bought one.
I didn't buy a Lancia because they rust, oh, I bought one of them.
I didn't buy a used Mercedes because they are unreliable, oh, I bought one of them too......

I'd rather take a risk than buy something ... safe.. probably why I haven't got further up the car ladder...

[varsas]

Well, if the engine problems in a Stag haven't put me off nothing will.

[jbi]

modern diesels are a complete no-go for me. Ticking time bombs.

Even to he point I have a 90,000 mile MG-ZT TD4 sitting on my grans driveway which my dad offered to me for nothing.

I have accepted his offer and it will shortly be going on ebay while I stick with my 20 year old petrol toyota

[FlauM]

I'm looking at a Mazda 3 MPS but have been slightly put off by owners clubs going on about smokey turbos and faulty VVT pulleys :/

I have awful luck with cars. My current one has (hopefully) bulletproof b18 engine but everything else in the car has gone wrong

[Vladimir]

I was warned about Defender reliability so bought off a main dealer thinking that would make it all okay. It wasn't and the dealer was pretty much a crook.

I think that's called "doing it the wrong way around."

[Fort Jefferson]

RMS problem on the Boxter.

[All that jazz]

Anything with a DPF. Anything with the M32 gearbox (Astra 1.9 CDTI, for example).

[LukeBird]

IMS problem on Boxster. No way I would risk running one without a warranty.
Given the freefall on 996/997 prices, I doubt I'm the only one who has thought this.

[petrolsniffer]

Air con needs 're-gas'

No it doesn't or you'd of paid the £40 or so to have it done

[snuffle]

buzzer said:

What cars have you fancied buying and the done a bit of research to find they have an inherent fault that puts you off?

For me there have been a few...

I didn't buy an Elise with a K series due to head gasket failures.... I bought one with a Toyota engine

So, to solve the problem of a possible K series head gasket failure, you bought a car with a known weak gearbox.

[VeeDub Geezer]

Working in a salvage yard means I learn the common faults with 90% of the cars on the road. I no longer see cars in classifieds, I see potential faults. It's killed my confidence in a few nice, cheap sheds I'd have otherwise bought.

[adsvx220]

snuffle said:

buzzer said:

What cars have you fancied buying and the done a bit of research to find they have an inherent fault that puts you off?

For me there have been a few...

I didn't buy an Elise with a K series due to head gasket failures.... I bought one with a Toyota engine

So, to solve the problem of a possible K series head gasket failure, you bought a car with a known weak gearbox.

The yota engine elises also crack cams which is quite common.

[Dodsy]

petrolsniffer said:

Air con needs 're-gas'

No it doesn't or you'd of paid the £40 or so to have it done

Not always the case - at the bottom end of the market £40 can be a significant proportion of the car value and you wont get it back when you sell. I bought my son a daewoo lanos recently for £600 with non functioning aircon, that 'probably needed a regas' but I didnt care that it wasnt working I just needed a cheap car.

As it happens a quick fiddle with some relays and a £30 regas and its blowing the coldest air of any aircon I've had in any car

[fozzymandeus]

If known faults put me off buying a car I wanted I wouldn't be driving a Mercedes.

Most common known fault on a car that puts me off is the price being too high, but I have a suspicion I'll chicken out of buying a Maserati Granturismo because by the time I can afford one, some truly frightening defects will be well publicised.

[Dodsy]

Its not so much the common faults that put me off, more the lack of care some people have given their cars.

If you go in with your eyes open knowing about the common faults you can check for them and maybe get some money off if they havent been sorted. Or pick a car that has very few known problems. Make sure you join the owners online forum and ask around before buying.

example - I'm looking for an XJ8 3.5 right now. They can have wishbone bush problems but other than that nothing too expensive goes wrong. Saw one 2 weeks ago, right colour, wheels, interior in fact it was bang on. Only problem was lack of a specialist or jag service history.

Now as long as its been looked after this isnt a problem but I noticed the front disks were totally worn out as were the pads, coolant was below minimum and it had some crappy tyres on it. Last service wasnt long ago so it said to me that the owner had run the car on the cheap not taking care of important stuff so it probably had a few issues waiting to surface.

This was a car at a dealer on top money for the year and age and he refused to even discuss reducing the price due to all the things that needed sorting on it.

[OldSkoolRS]

LukeBird said:

IMS problem on Boxster. No way I would risk running one without a warranty.
Given the freefall on 996/997 prices, I doubt I'm the only one who has thought this.

Same here, though also because I wasn't too sure about leaving a Boxster on my drive as well incase someone thought I was flashy and keyed it or cut the roof.

If a car has a known issue, then sometimes it can be useful bargaining point if you're handy with the spanners (or welder in the case of the OP's Z3M diff mounts ). May even help resale if you have evidence of the work being done. I know I'd rather buy a TVR Chimaera that has already had the outriggers done and a new camshaft if over 50,000 miles for example (if I ever get to go looking at them that is...).

[Watchman]

Most well-known problems have well-known fixes. Sometimes these fixes are OEM upgrades, sometimes they're aftermarket. Most often the fixes are "permanent" so if the fix has been applied it wouldn't put me off the car. In fact, if the fix is reasonably-priced you might consider buying a car without the fix already having been applied, and drive the purchase price of the car down disproportionately.

[zb]

Pulsar GTi-R. It wasn't the renowned chocolate gearbox that put me off, it was one that I found for sale and by a pure quirk of fate I bumped into a previous owner who informed me "great car till the engine went bang, think they all do that eventually". Now I know a lot will be ruined by "tuning" that is little more than ramping up the boost and not upgrading anything else, but that's the problem. Too many just seem to have been through the wrong hands, that I'd want a full rebuild, forged components etc, just to be sure.

Edit: it wasn't the previous owner that I was talking to that it went bang with, it went bang a few months after he sold it, as the new owner emailed him to let him know (no blame on the chap I knew).

Edited by zb on Saturday 28th April 13:12

[stewies_minion]

Anything with a VAG DSG

I had one for a couple of years. Anytime it knocked it clunked, I very nearly had kittens.

Life's too short to be sat in a ticking time bomb.

In saying that, it was fine and there are millions of them that are fine. I just felt unlucky.