Hi
I have a Citroen C8, bought from new, that is now just over 5 1/2 years old with ~62,000 on the clock. It has a full service history that was only done by the dealer during the entire warranty period of 3 years.
It developed a problem with a loss of power below 3000rpm about 5 months ago, and since then I've been dealing with the dealer and Citroen trying to get this resolved. I've quickly detailed the timeline below of the last few months:
June– loss of power begins to appear
July – dealer looks at it and diagnose a sticking variable vane turbo – offers fuel additive as a solution. Cost ~£300.
August – taken back to dealer as no improvement. Now told it isn’t the turbo (doesn’t even have a VV turbo on it) but it’s probably the injectors. Try to charge me ~£250 but I refuse to pay and they accept that. Offers more additive to attempt to clean the injectors. This doesn't work, but takes up 2 months of motoring.
August – Contact Citroen to complain. They respond by offering to have the car looked at by removing the engine and then discussing costs and offer to help as much as possible in this, and tell me to take it back to the dealer. The dealer refuses to book the repair in as Citroen have not authorised the cost. Now the fun begins.
December – after much pushing from me via lots of phone calls, several emails, and several attempts to get the dealer to accept the car I finally have to agree to 6 hrs labour to get them to start work, at a cost of £390. I state my position re this that Citroen said they would do this and copy email from Citroen to the dealer as proof. I contact the area manager at Citroen, but strangely he now seems to be missing in all this.
After 5 working days without a car, I contact the dealer only to find out they have yet to remove the engine, having first decided to try out another method to remove injectors – they will not charge for this. Today I'm finally told that 3 of the 4 injectors are stuck, and to get them out involves smashing several parts of the engine, and will cost £3-5000 to repair. I now have a car with the engine removed sitting at the dealers and no resolution in sight.
My intention is to seek damages from the dealer if they refuse to repair this at their cost, under the Sale of Goods act, because it is a reasonable expectation for an engine to not require this level of work at this point in it's life. It also seems to be flawed in it's design, if manifolds and cylinder heads have to be smashed off the engine to remove injectors, which would maybe indicate that the engine may never have been fit for purpose.
Am I misplaced in this thinking, and does anyone have any advice on how best to take it forward?
TIA.