I have only glanced over this thread but if it has happened to your sons car twice.......dont you think it could be his driving/driving style? You say you also have a 1.2 stuck in 3rd gear,well that could just be a cable fault.
Do you use these cars as driving instructor cars?
Hi,
My son's car is not a driving school car but the others are (or were re the 2002 & 2003 models).
Not many people will do the 20 to 35,000 miles year in their Fiats the way we will, but the car should be able to take it. As I have said, we have had issues with Corsas requiring new engines out of warranty time and mileage wise and although we had to fight our corner, Vauxhall did the right thing and accepted the problem was theirs.
I have read a small % of posts on this site but already there are countless posts/replies on this forum re gearbox problems, and in my opinion there are a high number of gearbox faults related to damaged components inside bursting the gearbox casings - they include the older 2000+ Puntos, the newer G/Puntos and especially the Stilos (a lot of the Stilos)
My main concern (after going through my son like the proverbial dose of salts) when the first gearbox holed the casing from the inside out was being told it was over-revved. I didn't question what was meant by this term Fiat were using and wrongly presumed it was constantly red-lining the car when driving or sitting stopped.
It is only this week when it was mentioned again, I asked the workshop manager if he could explain what was meant and he said, he initially thought the same as me but no, that was not the case. His understanding of the over-revving is the car being driven at a particular speed and without slowing the car down much or at all, a lower gear is selected and the revs increase but not necessarily up to the red-line.
On hearing this I asked my son if he still uses sustained revs gear changes the way I have taught him and he says he does. I am sorry but this is a perfectly acceptable manner of changing gears and any car gearbox should be able to take it. The Stilo was used by an experienced instructor and the older 2002/3 Punto was actually used by me personally when the same thing happened.
Speaking to the Fiat garage Sales Manager who sold us the cars his comment regarding the over-revving was - 'I am sorry Brian but what do they think they mean by that?' He had no idea.
I say here again that the garage say they are backing me 100% and feel it is a manufacturing failure of the rod that damaged the casing. I will be asking the garage and Fiat under the Data Protection Act to release to my son, full disclosure of all information they have on computer, worksheets or hand written notes regarding his car and this will be going the full way.
Already my wife is saying that on the face of it the G/Puntos appear to be better than the older Punto but that wouldn't be hard as we experienced numerous faults requiring them to be off the road in the garage from only a few 1,000 miles on the clock and we can do 500 to 1,000 miles a week!
However she can also see already, as the cars are about 1 1/yrs old, that they still do not take the wear associated with higher mileage, that we would expect from other cars our instructors have in our fleet.
As I have already said in this post, is the car a reasonably good value for money car for someone doing average or less than average miles? YES I do.
Is it as good value for us from a business point of view covering high miles? NO I don't
My wife will be thinking very carefully before she considers a Fiat for the driving school car again and yet she has an instructor who was hinting at the New 500.