French Car RANT

[Cone]

Boy am i pissed off today...

The wife called me up in a tizzie fit as her Renault Scenic was no longer recognising the key...

Its one of these rubbishy card keys. A little bit of research shows that this is a totally common fault where by the continual use of unlocking and locking the car with the buttons and the flex in the cheap card key causes stress fractures in the coil on the PCB.

So my car is now stuck in a very awkward position waiting to be recovered this is all due to another bit of rubbish FRENCH engineering...

Grr.. I have dismantled the key and the coil cant be reused so need to wait for a new key housing and coil to arrive in the post and get the car collected, bear in mind that will be a total pain as it's stuck in park with the electronic handbrake stuck on...

Bloody FRENCH...

[mawse]

There is usually a small 'traditional' key that is available when you remove the battery cover. The key hole is on the passenger side (as its french).

[Cone]

Yes you are correct, so you would assume that this will start the car when it breaks...

But you would be mistaken this only opens the doors!!!!!!

[mawse]

Ah so not push button start then

[Cone]

Yes one non working push button start

[mawse]

what about the second remote?

[byewayrider]

Have you looked on the renault uk forum as they post some great stuff and fixes...

I love renaults by the way...va va voom...and peugeot..but not citoren electrics..

[sprintster]

I've got a similar problem with a Renault Megane.Everything was fine for the first month of ownership until we went away for a soggy weekend on Skye then the electrics went haywire.Wipers turning themselves on doors locking and unlocking as you drive along etc.I couldn't even turn the engine off because of this stupid push button start/stop.
Eventually got home to my local garage and he immediately knew water had got into the fuse box.Dried it out and everything was fine again until the next rainy weekend and it packed up again.I bought another fuse box and it started alright but got 20 yards up the road the engine cut out and the dash is now flashing "electronic fault" and won't start.
I gave up and bought a reliable Volkswagen but I can't even get rid of the Renault for spares or repair now.I managed to find another fuse box,ecu and immobilser with keycard for £25 on eBay so I'm going to try fitting them tomorrow and see what happens otherwise it's a phone call to the scrappies!
I'll never buy a French car again though! :pinch:

[Cone]

Same, never buy French again, but i know what it is, its plastered all over the net. The crummy build of the card causes the internal coil to snap off meaning the car doesn recognise the card. I have brought a new coil to solder in but it probaly wont trun up for a good few days

[Tink]

I had a Citroen c4 diesel a few year ago biggest bag of Shite going,
I will never had another French car, bought a Toyota Rav 4 and its been superb (thumbs) (thumbs) lesson learnt (thumbs) (thumbs)