Faults:
I have a Catera and the car broke down before I left the parking lot. The dealer checked it out and said that it had to reset itself due to a new radiator, I don't know much about cars, but that seemed too suspicious.
Within 24 hours of having the car, every light came on; the coolant light, which will not, no matter what, go off, although it is full.
The oil light came on; I put oil in the car, the right kind according to the manual, and put it in the right place. The oil light went off and shortly after the check engine light came on, which I now want go off, the brake light, the leveling light, all came on and go off and come back on.
The car has a bad toxic fumy smell that sometimes comes in through the heater that can be unbearable. I have a hand held scanner to check for codes and it will give me one code one minute than 5 the next, but I always get code p440, which I looked up and means evap malfunction.
And some how oil keeps getting into the coolant, and I'm not putting it in there, and I know nobody else is, and on top of that the A/C doesn't work.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the car will make a loud popping noise, and the radio will disable, and when the radio disables, the buttons beside the radio will disable, which if you have a Catera, you know that the trunk popper and the fuel door popper will disable, and when it's having this spell, the keyless entry will not even open the fuel door or trunk. There is no key hole to open the trunk, and you can't just open the fuel door with your hand, it has to be popped (unlocked). In other words when this occurs I'm S.O.L. if the gas is low, because I have no idea at any given time how long it will be before the radio and those buttons on the sides (trunk, fuel door) will come back on; sometimes it's 5 minutes sometimes it's an hour.
When the car runs, it's very smooth but it hardly runs. I did test drive this car for about 30 minutes, and it seemed perfect, but when I came to the dealer to pick it up a few days later, I have had nothing but problems.
I have only had this car for five days, and have all these problems. I want the car, so does anyone have any idea what could be wrong with it and how much it will cost to fix?
22nd Sep 2009, 00:07
I forgot to add, women whom I date get nervous when they see the dashboard all lit up with warning lights. They can't believe the car is still running! All I have to do is cross my fingers and reassure them it's not going to break down. Makes for an interesting first date :)