Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Depends on what the met officer can come up with?

Random question: our car went in for a service the other day and first trip after it came back Mrs Sparky said it was spluttering and juddering and the engine warning light came on.

It’s gone back to the garage today and they’ve told her “corroded coil and plugs” and quoted £500. Not a single issue before it went to the garage.

I’m going to call at lunch. What do you guys think? Anything I should be asking? Sounds dodgy to me. Plugs are a few quid, right?

Sounds like bollocks to me. Spark plugs can't corrode to any significant degree, or at least they shouldn't in normal use. Coil packs on modern cars are covered in plastic and the only bit to corrode would be the terminals, which could be cleaned up easily if necessary. Sounds like BS to me. Ask them what the OBDII fault codes were.

P.S. Plugs are indeed cheap. Coil packs can be quite pricey, especially as some cars have four separate coils but bundled together in a single pack, so you have to replace all four.

Which garage? I've had positive experiences with Mersh Bros behind Bellingham station, so if it wasn't them wot buggered it, they might be able to help you out.

Further to this, I got an bluetooth ODB2 connector from amazon (Torque Pro), with the Torque app. Mostly got it so I could have charts flying around as I drove, but it's a really cheap way to show all the engine codes and what they mean (including clearing them if you want).

You can then do a bit of pre-garage googling. It was about a tenner all in.

I just spoke to them. He said plugs themselves were corroded, as was the coil pack. I asked what the problem with the plugs was and he didn’t know - was someone else working on them. He reckoned they hadn’t been changed since 2014. Does that sound right? It’s a 2012 Corsa on 45k and we’ve done services by the book since we bought it at 25k.

Labour at £130 an hour seems to be the bulk of it. Plugs are £7 each and coil pack is £220. Garage is W J King in Bromley. They’ve always been ok previously.

Oh, they said there were no faults on the computer. Which is odd because the engine warning light came on, according to Mrs Sparky. But maybe no fault got recorded.

A real quick google suggest £70 for new coilpack and spark plugs for 2012 Corsa.

£430 of labour?

They've got to be shit if it takes 3 hours to do plugs and a coilpack.

pretty easy to it yourself

I just watched a Youtube tutorial in queue at Pret and I’m confident I could do that. Going to collect the car and look at plugs and coil to see if they actually are corroded. If they are I’ll order parts and do it myself. If they’re not then... I’ll cross that bridge.

They'll charge you an hour for diagnosing it I bet, so you'll still pay £120, but you'll save £300 in total.

But might be worth reading some of the negative reviews and the ELM 327 wiki page as this is a newer car.

This item, like most cheap OBD scanners using "elm 327" in their name are counterfits running on very old, outdated firmware that won't work with more modern cars, and can not make use of any the modern OBD protocols, despite false claims that they do.
These devices are named "elm 327" as they are based on 'elm electronics' original OBD protocol interpreter ICs', and are counterfiet clones of this firmware.
Elm accidentally released a version of their ICs without the firmware protected, and effectively had their firmware stolen and then put in cloned devices such as these. This was version 1.0 (they are now on v 2.2) and as per Wikipedia article on elm327, most fakes claim they are using "V1.5" (like this listing) despite there never being a version 1.5 ever being released by elm.
Don't waste your money on this. Use the "elm327 identifier" app, which will test various AT codes if you don't believe me, it will fail to do any of the modern ones and I doubt all the pins are even connected on this device.
Most people are plugging this in their car, reading the car temperature, revs and so on which are basic reporting from original OBD protocol and thinking this device "Works", and yet are lacking out on substantial features, scans that won't return genuine issues because feature isn't implimented!
You won't get a genuine, modern OBD scanner for this cheap. Genuine ones are towards the £100 mark.
If your car was built in the last 10 years you're missing features! Regardless, the v1 that got stolen had bugs in it too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELM327#Pirate_clones

Edit: I'm still tempted, as my car is 20 years old...

Ouch. You think?

They'll have a minimum charge, it might be 0.5 hr labour, but could be 1 hr.

Just seems odd that the plugs and coil have been corroding away, and that it suddenly manifests itself as an issue on the drive back from collecting it from a service at the garage.

I also can't seem to find a service schedule to see if the plugs actually will date back to 2014. Even if they do, I can't see how they'd have got corroded.

Exactly - do as much as you can yourself.

Plugs on mine are every two years IIRC.

Mrs Sparky collected the car - no cost. Paperwork says that they'd removed coil for an "actuator test" and that's when they spotted the corrosion on plugs and coil. I'll have a look when I get a chance. If they look ropey I'll order the parts.

Where did you see one for £70? I see AllParts has one for £100.

use code winter35 for 35% off at eurocarparts

Anyone know anywhere in London I could pick up something like this? My exhaust hangers seem to all be in slightly the wrong place for the new pipe and I need to get it at least mounted up for an MOT this week.

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Thanks!

Gotta be Clerkenwell Screws No? They haz everfing.

Which engine is it?