119 Days And Vauxhall Say 'So'.......

Not happy. This has been going on for 119 days now and still not concluded and because I have no faith left in the car now I'm looking at changing it this week ( more news later on when its confirmed ), doing this midterm means a potential loss from MY pocket of £4-5k ! I approached Vauxhall about this and the issues they have created ( detailed on my Nidd Vale saga thread ) but they have said they will not do any more now. Servicing the car ( due to it been in so many bits so many times ) and cleaning the AC system of bugs seeing as it stood about for so long was seen as enough. I am therefore taking this further as I feel at the very least others must know about the possible situation and how they try to get out of it. Furthermore there are some major technical issues around ECUs and the CANBUS system which may cause future problems to the innocent eg the removal of the stock radio prevents kit like gearboxes been changed.On the plus side Nidd Vale have redeemed themselves and after a detailed face to face I can firmly say they recognise some of the problems that I have experienced and in that they have done what they can.

If you have a Vauxhall and are affected by this or any other major issue you can contact the Chairman of Vauxhall at bill.parfitt@gm.com or the Vauxhall Exec team on 0845 0902051.

85 Days And My Cars Back - Well Almost

Well after 85 days my car is back.... well almost but we'll come to that shortly. What was the problem I hear you ask ? Well re the gear box ( which they put back in ) it seems the timing chain has sliped a cog ( and its unknown how this happerned ) and through the car in to conflict. In other words all the ECUs where fighting and the car went gaga as a result. Does this explain the loss of braking ? No - this cant be found either how ever may be related as its not come back. Its gone back today unfortuntly due to the radio not working how ever this is minor all things considered. So whats Vauxhalls response to this farce ? Well first of all I am still waiting for the offical report to tell me all the above as I found that out by speaking to the local team my self. Will they extend the warrenty ? No they won't - in fact I had the whole situation sold to me that they did ME a favour by finishing off the service and de-bugging the AC. I also asked for my CD70 to be changed for an updated one with an Aux port on as I now have to keep the radio in or there may be issues ( ie this is why they could not reprograme the car ) - yet again no was the answer. You can read the details on my work log but this is not the end of it as far as I am concerned as there are potential issues here for other Vectra owners.

May The Farce Be With You - The Nidd Vale Saga

Normally I don't use my web site to moan and complain - thats what family is for :) - but in this case especially as its relevant I thought I'd share my ongoing log of the problem on my car with you all. Entitled "May The Farce Be With You - The Nidd Vale Saga" after a brief spell of Spaceballs on the Vectra-C forum it tells the tale of how 55 days later ( at the time of writing ) and despite contacting Nidd Vale the dealers where I bought the car from - who I might add have not bothered calling to check on me.... now theres customer service - and contacting the Vx Exec support team by emailing Bill Pulfitt ( the current VX CEO ) directly I am still car less. The last update I have is that they can not commit to giving me a date when they can give me a date to look at my car as the specialist engineers are busy. Just about every one you can think of is involved in chasing this up yet still I am driving around in a rental which is all very nice but its not mine and its not a resolution. They are legally following the warranty but have no SLAs to follow so could be 1 day - 1 month or even 1 year before the repair is completed and the car is returned. Any way - have a look at the blog and judge for your self at the level of customer experience you should expect when dealing with Nidd Vale and Vauxhall.... if any thing its put me off from buying a nearly new car again as I never had any of this problem before.

My Vx Day & Night Skin Released

Seeing as I am now running Centrafuse it only seemed right that I have a matching skin to my Cars OEM system.... so here it is - Vx Day & Night. This skin was originally the Gizmo skin from Zorro and I updated using Zorros VD2 Designer how ever there is no reason this can not be used on other cars. Currently supported plug-ins are Bluetooth Control, Camera, Contacts, Email, Infill, Logodashboard ODBII Phidgets Pluginbrowser POIWarner Satradio, Scribble, Skinbrowser, Skype, Weather, Web, Wifi, and TPMS is coming soon. More infomation and the download link can be found on the Fluxmedia forums here.

I've also been busy looking at other hardware options for a CarPC. These include my new Carkit which has AD2P and AVRCP support ( See the gallery images ) which I hope at some point Centrafuse 2 will work with. I reviewed the connects2 AD2P adaptor thanks to Jason at KDT Ltd... and you can read that on the reviews section of Digital-car.co.uk.