Thread: Diesel Contamination

Originally Posted by Celtoid

I agree BigJon.

the service has been excellent...even above and beyond....covering stuff that could be easily palmed away as accidental damage.

Cheers,

Kev.

My thoughts as well,i should know as i have had 4 new LR's over the last 13yrs,plus my son has had the Puma.And not all these vehicles were serviced at the dealer.

Actually the dealer went out of their way to rectify a few faults with the Puma at the end of the warranty period,and it had never had a service at a dealer.

But as for their servicing of vehicles(not warranty work),well i will only say i won't use them.

There are LR specialists around that are easily twice as good,at half the price.

As for our work jap vans,the dealer tries their utmost to not do anything under warranty,everything becomes an argument,and they have NO interest in helping with anything

Just my .002cents worth

Originally Posted by jonesy63

Agree - if you've had your LR serviced by an independent instead of LR dealer, then they're less likely to help after warranty has ended.

Definitely NOT what i have found here,but then again the LR specialist i use ,as do many others on here ,has a very good relationship with the main dealer in Brisbane.

An update.....

Thanks for all the replies.

The car is back on the road as of today and running quite nicely. Its good to be back in it but it doesn't feel the same anymore. It used to give me such a smile just to drive it around, that new car kind of feeling but the whole experience has been sullied by this nasty affair.

The bill for 4 new injectors plus the labour and cleaning of the tank and fuel lines was $6K!!!!! Plus there is a chance the other two injectors will need replacing sometime as well. The group looking after it have done a great job and been very helpful.

The oil lab report came back showing 6 times the normal level of retained solids (sediment) and 2 times the normal level of water. The lab wasn't too worried by the water content but the retained solids was almost certainly the cause of the seized injectors.

The independent fuel company has at this stage washed their hands clean of the issue. With the three things they look at in these claims all coming back negative. The dip tests of the day came back ok (which only look at water content), there was no other customer complaints and there was no change in the fuel sales around that time. Interestingly the day I bought the fuel it had snowed in the mountains, not sure whether that might have affected things. The servo would have definitely been closed for at least 20 hours as the roads were closed that long. Not sure if that might have affected sedimentation in their tanks and I got the dregs from the bottom. As they don't test for retained solids in their fuel there may be an argument to make there.

The statutory warranty on the car was looking promising however the mechanic could find no evidence of sediment in the fuel tank. And the comprehensive insurance doesn't cover for mechanical failure however there is a clause for damage caused by malicious events.Hard to prove that someone maliciously put something in my tank. The allianz extended warranty doesn't cover for mechanical failure caused by contaminated lubricants or fluids.

The thing that gets me the most is that I did all the research, had the car thoroughly checked over, paid extra to covered myself for mechanical failure and told all the naysayers who tried to talk me out of buying a Land Rover that LR's reliability issues had all been resolved. Needless to say they are all sitting back smugly saying I told you so.

I'll let you know should I have any luck making any claims. The one positive to come out of it was being put onto the NSW Range Rover Club by the mechanic. I'll join up and hopefully get some more off roading experience with tem. Who knows I might just manage to kill the last two injectors.

Nate

in these cases I always reccomend that you have the investigator do a pull through on the fuel line from the filter to the engine and have the output side of the filter particulate tested.

I'll be that if either of those tests were done (or are done now) you will get a result that gets you a warranty job paid for. Especially if you can prove that the filter was recently changed and fitted by a professional mechanic.

Most insurance will cover for fuel contamination as this is what caused the mechanical failure. However you are at their mercy as this type of thing is not normally specifically addressed in the policy and it is there judgement if that damage comes under their policy.

I have spoken to a claim assessor (not the call centre) at AAMI and they have paid out on many but have also knocked back on a couple - depends on the circumstances but he said they do lean to paying up.

Garry

Following on from this thread - I have a question - what after market water/sediment detection systems do members on here have fitted to their vehicles ?
What did they cost and are they effective ?
cheers

Davis performance Landys sell a system called water watch which will alarm if it detects water in the fuel, not sure about sediment. I haven't got one, thought about it, but it is bloody expensive so decided to take the risk.

Hi All,

Thanks to all those who contributed to the thread. I thought I'd let everyone know the outcome of my diesel contamination claim.

The fuel company essentially said it wasn't there fuel and refused to pay.

My comprehensive insurer Lumley came to the party and paid out the $8000. It took a very long time but they paid and it wasn't ever really contested with myself. I'm sure the assessors and underwriters went back and forth for a while and that's why it took so long. The whole time I was the lucky recipient of everyone under the suns opinion that the insurer would never pay out but thanks to advice gained thru this forum I pursued it and got it thru. The loudest of all those was the insurance broker (twit) who assured me in no uncertain terms on every occasion that we were wasting our time. Seeing him eating humble pie was very sweet!

So my advice to everyone if you ever suffer a similar misfortune make a claim with your insurer. I think it just depends on the mood of the assessor on the day, you probably will get lucky as well.

Cheers
Nathan