Having owned Dave2 for 7 weeks I'm sad to say all is not good with the new car, now I've often been accused of being a Dacia fanboy and I've always said I'm not, I say it as it is, to that end my experiences with Dave1 was always so positive, hence my blog and thoughts of the brand have always been so good.
Fast forward to Dave2 ownership, firstly paint issues that were identified when he was collected, the drivers door had been dinked that morning, the dealers took the car back within a couple of weeks and rectified the issue, however the other paint issue involved cracking and damage to the laquer due to bird poo, a small mark the size of a 5p piece on the roof and two similar size marks on the tailgate spoiler. Still waiting for these to be rectified and disappointed that they weren't sorted at the same time.
Now the other issue and this is a BIGGY!
Dave2 has a lack of power/torque, this has only just started to come to light as because I was 'running in' the car I've avoided using the turbo to its max, however after 1500 miles I'm starting to stretch Dave's legs, this has highlighted a lack of torque, especially at midrange when you most need it for those overtakes.
Last year I moved house, this now makes it almost 50 miles for me to get to Jaybee Motors in Banbury, but as they have always given me exceptional service I will continue to use them.
So on Monday I drove the hour and a quarter to drop the car off, got given a 67 plate Stepway diesel as a courtesy car and noticed instantly on the drive home the difference between the two cars. Well Dave has been plugged in, poked, reset, checked and the diagnosis....No fault found! This is where I have a problem with modern tech, 'computer says no', however over 30 years driving, almost as many years working in the automotive and associated industries and having rebuilt many engines in the past, I know something isn't right.
Back to the dealers today and spent a couple of hours with their chief technician (that's what I call customer service) going through everything, we took my car for a drive, the Stepway courtesy car for a drive and also a Logan demonstrator out as well, all having the same 1.5 turbo engine. Both the latter cars had huge amounts of torque and pulled through the gears well, whereas Dave feels flat through the similar rev ranges.
Time for a little digging further, the tech plugged in his little box of tricks and printed out the readings on all three cars, it would appear that although all 3 cars have the same software updates however their are some differences with some of the other settings and appear to have different ECU codes, unfortunately they aren't just plug and go ECUs (contrary to popular belief) and they require programming to each car so we couldn't just nick one out of the two good cars to try.
So things are being referred to Dacia UK's technical team to get some feedback as to how they want things progressed, Jaybee's are going to need authority to replace parts, particularly when they don't know where the issue is. Could be an ECU, could be fly by wire, could be a turbo related issue or a component part of the turbo, obviously this potentially could stretch to thousands of pounds to replace the lot and still may be no further forward, so this is now down to Dacia to progress.
I am also considering getting Dave to the local rolling road centre, just to get an idea of power, torque and powerband readings.
Now the real dilemma, this was the last unregistered diesel Logan Stepway Summit left in the UK, so I'm very very reluctant to reject the car, as I really want to love this car, but at the moment I'm really torn.
Hoping Dacia UK can do me proud and make me sound like a fanboy again by sorting Dave to be the car I so desperately want him to be.
Fingers crossed.
