Bought the car in November, had some oil leaks so took it to SE. Turned out the engine had major problems. Complete engine rebuild, and new 360 turbos fitted £4855. Three and a half months later and the car is ready for collection.

Two days later and the auto box craps out. Car off the road for another two weeks. Bought a replacement box and back to SE for fitting. A week later and the car was ready. The following day I noticed a puff of blue smoke coming from the exhaust every time I came to a stop, I hoped that this was just things settling down after the rebuild but yesterday the blue smoke seed to be getting worse. This morning I went out to investigate, let the car war up on idle and within a few minuets the passenger exhaust was blowing out loads of blue smoke and filling up the car park, smoke clears when I rev the engine but returns as soon as the engine gets back to idle speed. Looks like I’m going back to SE again. Hopefully I’ll have the car on the road for the summer.

 

To summarise:

Bought the car in November £4500

Had engine rebuild and new turbos £4855

Had replacement gear box fitted £1300

Owned the car for five months and driven it for three days, that works out to £3551 for each day on the road.

 

Still, I've had plenty of time to keep it clean.

 

 

sorry to hear that. But do you guys on this forum not see a pattern arising here. And there are two Letters in it?

That sucks dude. Not trying to make fun of your situation, but it just seems to be the same situation over and over again.

 

[This message has been edited by 300z (edited 12-03-2002).]

No mate, this basically proves my point about 300's. SE don't break them Warren, they fix them!

 

OK so it's expensive but what do you expect when the car cost over 30K brand spanking?

 

If the Z V6 is so bullet proof and fantastic how come there are always a herd of 300's parked outside SE waiting for rebuilds??? ROFL

 

 

 

------------------

Again lol you dont see a pattern emerging lol.

Its called customer return buisness. Youd be amazed how many people do it, or force it.

 

(Not starting a war here, just expressing my opinion, and not accusing anyone of anything)

The problem would seem to be imho a defective turbo oil seal. The turbos are not built at SE just fitted so I guess the problem is with their supplier. A bad turbo could have been fitted by anyone.

Very True Smithy had all this when he fitted new turbos at RC.

 

------------------

And where were those turbos rebuilt ? I think I know, but I don't want to accuse anyone in public before I know for certain.

Anyway, should get my breather pipes soon !!!

Just a thought - how much smoke is there ? Could it be an O2 sensor like on mine ?

Maybe not if it's blue smoke, but it's worth checking. Can use my Techtom if you're interested.

Originally posted by AndyP:

And where were those turbos rebuilt ? I think I know, but I don't want to accuse anyone in public before I know for certain.

Anyway, should get my breather pipes soon !!!

 

Me know where you're coming from Mr. P!

 

 

 

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Thanks Andy

You got email.

LOL im on about gearboxes getting shagged not turbos, we all know terrifying turbo rebuild if that is who they are, are a bunch of dicks which ever way you look at it.

 

Just to back myself up i was at Xoticar when a guy came in with a black zed, that had been done at SE not two months before, and they put it on the lift to see why the gearbox was clunking, only to find there was 1 bolt holing the box in, the rest were not even there?????

And that was after an engine rebuild.

 

Warren its only you that comes out with these storys,change the record please .

 

------------------

Hi guys,

I had to ad my 10p worth.

Steves my best mate and I have to say he seems to have been fairly happy with the work that SE have done. BUT.

And I dont mean to offend him or anyone else.

 

The standard of work has been awful.

No auto trans fluid in the box no wonder it went south.

Coil pack hanging off.

(And this was after they road tested it, hum).

New battery needed because they had it so long and didnt keep the old one charged.

Now its blowing out smoke.

What next !

 

Ian no storys bud, you can phone xoticar now and ask them about the black zed that came in from SE.

 

And i certainly never made Timmys one up or this one for that matter.

Just pointing it out, not saying it is so.

 

 

Wow is the SE bit getting worring or what? I for one have no personal experience of their work but have like the rest of us seen the development of a string of complaints that all have a very similar thread to them.They seem to always cover the amount of time jobs take and the lack of good customer service and sadley the quality of the work.Again I have no personal experience here but have sat back and watched the aforementioned developments and I am quite staggered to read again an auto box failure (among other things) almost immediately after an engine out at SE. If we are to trust the work and integrity in any workshop, this kind of repeat work / quality failure cannot be dismissed as coincidence or just one or two in hundreds of happy customers, nor can they cost £30 grand when new (sorry Tim only my opinion) because the truth is they are well built but often NOT looked after!I have no interest in other traders workshop practises or their customer care and work quality because basically I trust any of them, I am very lucky that I can do (and want to) all my own work and have the knowledge and facility to do it, but it is important that the guys who do need help getting jobs done on their zeds get the BEST advise available so these threads are important to serve as warnings when needed.

 

Has anyone asked or approached SE to comment on any issues that have been raised here.. Craig?

 

Jeff TT

TO true jeff.

I went to the SE open day to talk to pete after i had been robbed blind by them. Anyway had a chat and it all seemed to have gone alright, was told to phone him during the week and that he would try sort something out for me, well phoned about 7-8 times, and always got the same answer lol, So that was enough for me.

 

Originally posted by Steve.r:

Bought the car in November, had some oil leaks so took it to SE. Turned out the engine had major problems. Complete engine rebuild, and new 360 turbos fitted £4855. Three and a half months later and the car is ready for collection.

Two days later and the auto box craps out. Car off the road for another two weeks. Bought a replacement box and back to SE for fitting. A week later and the car was ready. The following day I noticed a puff of blue smoke coming from the exhaust every time I came to a stop, I hoped that this was just things settling down after the rebuild but yesterday the blue smoke seed to be getting worse. This morning I went out to investigate, let the car war up on idle and within a few minuets the passenger exhaust was blowing out loads of blue smoke and filling up the car park, smoke clears when I rev the engine but returns as soon as the engine gets back to idle speed. Looks like I’m going back to SE again. Hopefully I’ll have the car on the road for the summer.

 

To summarise:

Bought the car in November £4500

Had engine rebuild and new turbos £4855

Had replacement gear box fitted £1300

Owned the car for five months and driven it for three days, that works out to £3551 for each day on the road.

 

Still, I've had plenty of time to keep it clean.

 

At the end of it all you will still have a relatively cheap Supercar for less than the price of a basic eurobox hatchback.

You can't expect to buy a 10 year old high performance machine for £4500 and not have to spend the same again to keep it on the road.....Unless you're very lucky IMHO.

 

 

It's cold comfort but IMHO Banzai is right.

 

Console yourself with what else could you get for £10k ish with half the style, performance etc.

 

Dumb question, but did the previous owner do any silly mods or abuse the car at all?

 

Listen, always look on the bright side of life (whistle) - when it's finished you'll think it all worthwhile.

 

------------------

Guess I must of been lucky then?? bought mine almost 12 months ago £4.5K no major probs.

Jeff TT

 

 

There will always be a few exceptions.And didn't you have to change the gearbox or some such major item Jeff?

You have saved yourself a packet by being your own mechanic.Most people aren't in the same position, and will have to fork out for any work to be done...hence the often large bills

Most 300Zxs in that price bracket are by now going to need some fair expenditure on them IMHO.

I can't be bothered adding opinions about companies to this debate, having done so countless times before.

 

Three observations though :

 

1) This thread is implying that the quality of work done by SE has been repeatedly questioned. My own interpretation of the SE debate over the past 2 or 3 years has been that work quality is excellent and customer service diabolical.

 

2) A link is being made between engine rebuilds and autoboxes going. Craig and others have proved that the engine is capable of 150,000+ miles if cared for. If engines are needing rebuild then they are (in most cases) going to be high mileage or not cared for at some point in their life. If that's the case then it's not likely that the autobox is going to be in pristine condition. In the case which started this thread, the two were very close together but not in others that I'm aware of.

 

3) IMHO it is wholly unreasonable to judge a company based on the observations of someone else looking at a car two months later when no-one knows what happened in-between. The customer does NOT always tell the truth.

 

And, Warren, we've also had conversations where we've shared mutual concern about another company involved in the above discussions. I personally wouldn't trust anything that company told me ...

 

Dave

Just for the record I would like to make a few points.

 

If you read my initial posting you will see that I did not nor will I try to say that my situation is down to a poor standard of work by SE. I am very happy to have them work on my car and believe that I have just been very unlucky. When an engine as sophisticated as this gets a full rebuild there is always going to be the possibility of something not being quite right and in this case, if as I suspect, it turns out to be a faulty turbo oil seal then it is highly likely that the fault would not start to show up for a few hundred miles. That’s what warranties are for.

 

I also realize that when you buy a fairly cheap ten year old car, unless you are very lucky you should expect to spend some money to get it right. If on final completion of the engine work I end up with a good reliable Z then I will be happy to have spent the money to get it to that stage.

 

So far as a link between engine rebuilds and auto box failure, I agree with Hairse in that it is a high mileage car and the gear box, like the engine had probably seen better days.

 

Steve r

 

There is also a pretty high failure rate with the auto gearbox anyway. Mine went at about 33,000 I think, although to be fair it was 7 years old at the time and I have no idea how it was treated for the first 6.5 years of it's life in Japan. It would be interesting to see, statistically, how many of them pack up. I was joking with Mike Feeeney (MJP) about this a week or two back and I think I remember him saying 'most' !