Help Needed...Car will not change gears.

Well, here we are...I wonder if I should start numbering these instalments to make them easier to follow.

Week 10: Can RACE Change a Clutch?

The cables finally arrived from the dealership in Cannes (owned by the same company as the dealer in Mulhouse) but we have the same result - a dead gearbox ecu. I asked my service advisor if the factory would have tested the ecu before sending, to which he replied, "normally yes".

We have a plan b, the 599 gearbox ecu reloaded with OTO firmware. It was released by the factory on Monday and should arrive before the end of the week. I am getting mentally prepared for this not to work...which will open a whole new can of worms.

 

I think I have passed from worry to angry. They refuse to share the technical diagnosis of the ecu, cannot commit to any timeline for repair, don't show any sense of urgency and in the end they will deny that they damaged the gearbox ecu.

What is really annoying me, however, my two sons who live in the US are coming to France in a few days and we had a 3 week tour, including the Nurburgring, planned.

 

Unfortunately the OTO has a different gearbox and ecu.

 

Week 11: Can RACE Change a Clutch?

The "new" gearbox ecu has still not arrived at the dealer although it was released by the factory last week Monday. An email was received by my service advisor today (from the logistics provider) saying there were some delays in last weeks orders but offering no further details.

I sent a rather direct letter to the service manager of the dealership with one key point, they had damaged my gearbox ecu while providing the clutch change and that everything from that moment forward was their responsibility. Oddly enough, without explicitly saying that they did it, they did agree in writing to cover all the costs of parts and labor related to the ecu and to either ship the car to Paris for free (a 1200 euro offer) or give an equivalent discount if I choose to pick it up myself and drive it back to Paris.

We are, then, still waiting...

 

Week 11.5: Can RACE Change a Clutch

New ECU arrived on Thursday. Friday, late-morning I got the call - come get your car.

Jump on the train at 2pm ready for a 3 hr ride to Mulhouse and then a return 5 hr drive to Paris. One hour from arrival I get a message, “your AC is not working, we have refilled the compressor, and the compressor is working, but the AC is blowing only hot air. We don’t have any more time today to troubleshoot.”

There was no way I was turning around without the car, so on to the dealership.

So the bill was as expected which was nice, but they decided to cover all the gearbox ecu work under warranty so they could retain possession of the old ecu…and they were really insistent that i could not keep it.

There was also some rather low quality finish work that my son pointed out while we were stopped for a few minutes…he said simply “is that wood glue?”

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On the positive side she is running and shifting better than ever and had her 70,000 km service as well.

As we do, we have already put 1000km of steamy driving on her in 24 hr. Today we had the better half and two of the boys for a trip from Paris to the renovation project and tmrw night it will be back to Paris and probably Tuesday I will take it to the dealer in Paris to see if he can reset the AC as it was working perfectly before sitting for nearly 3 months.

Not sure what to do yet about the bad glue job.

 

Here is the parts and labor lists for all of this drama just to see how many parts were changed.

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