General Marea mechanical problems any advise?

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General Marea mechanical problems any advise?

robdodd

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Feb 3, 2008
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I have just bought a 1997 elx 1.8 16v weekender

the boot was dodgy, and the bonnet release was hanging down, so i dropped the price (92k miles, £450 I hope a reasonable deal?)

Rest of the car looks great and the drive is good too. I am very impressed by the interior, comfort and layout..

My tailgate open warning stays on, no surprise because it wont stay shut. Looks like someone has put a screw in the tailgate handle but pulling this right out does not make a difference. Also neither key rotates the boot lock.

Also both front doors work ok (noisy drivers, I will try and tighten up the bolts) but sometime you have to push the handle in before you close the door,they both seem to have lost their spring return. Otherwise the doors will not shut tight. Is this a common problem, as a lot of threads appear to have requests for handles? Like I say, they work, but sometimes stick out and need to be nudged back.

The bonnet release can wait, hopefully ;)

Thankyou, in anticipation, for any replies/links/warnings etc..

Rob
 
Sounds like you bought my car, except my tailgate wont open from the outside! :rolleyes:

For the door handles, some WD-40 sprayed into it while opened out and worked back and forth a few times freed them off so now they spring back shut when released:)
 
The door handles staying in the open position is a fairly common thing I believe. My drivers door does it a lot. Rather than fix it I just developed a method of opening the door so the handle is returned to normal position when I let go.

I am of course very lazy or I would fix it. :eek:
 
The door handles sticking is pretty usual, I think the pivots wear and you get a bit more drag than the spring can cope with. I find that oiling with a heavy oil keeps it working for about 6 months at a time. I have no intention of buying and fitting 4 new handles.
The tailgate is pretty fully covered in the archives, I had a lot of help on here when I did mine.
 
Sounds like you bought my car, except my tailgate wont open from the outside! :rolleyes:

For the door handles, some WD-40 sprayed into it while opened out and worked back and forth a few times freed them off so now they spring back shut when released:)


Yes I tried that - it must have gone past that. I will try again though!

Cheers - Rob
 
The door handles sticking is pretty usual, I think the pivots wear and you get a bit more drag than the spring can cope with. I find that oiling with a heavy oil keeps it working for about 6 months at a time. I have no intention of buying and fitting 4 new handles.
The tailgate is pretty fully covered in the archives, I had a lot of help on here when I did mine.


Perhaps I wil try and get to the handles by removing the door skins, then oil from inside, I did try WD40.

Main problem is the tailgate so I will check the archives - cheers.
 
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