On 03/01/17 18:44, Anton Aylward wrote:
Its a transverse mounted engine so needs shock absorbers on the mounts to absorb the 'kick' as it starts and as the revs go up suddenly. He thought that was the problem. "but we replaced those 4 months ago!". It turned out that there is a sort-of flywheel on the crankshaft called a "harmonic balancer" that smooths out its running. Its a largish metal and rubber device. It had worn out, fallen apart. The computer had 'compensated' for this. As it failed it did a lot of damage to the crankshaft and hence the cylinder joints and cylinder alignment. Its something that would have been apparent early on in a non-computer car.
Should it show up in the logs? Yes, and after the event its possible to figure out what the warning signs were, but they weren't obvious a-priori. When the mechanic reported this upstream to GM the reaction was denial, denial, then "oh?". He tells me there was no bulletin issued about this and nothing in later model's releases or logs or diagnostic procedures about this.
:-) That car that let us down was also a GM ... When initially released, the cambelt service life was quoted at - iirc - 87,000 miles. After a bunch of failures, this was reduced to 54,000, then 27,000. I guess our car (originally a lease car) must have fallen through the cracks. The day before it was due to go in for its service - at about 50,000 miles - the cambelt fell off. Literally fell off. I was doing 70 on the motorway at the time. Fortunately, late at night, so I could safely coast in to the hard shoulder with a dead engine. Our mechanic rebuilt the engine, but a dealer service shop would almost certainly have written it off. We liked the car too much to do that, but ended up selling it shortly afterwards, anyway ... And I do take your point about computers, but my experience is far too much people burying their heads in the sand at signs that things are wrong, or simply refusing to be educated to the fact that their actions are actively making things worse, not better. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org