17th Aug 2010, 12:33

I bought my 06 Vectra Elite estate (3.0 V6 diesel) in the beginning of June with 78K, £7200, so far so good.

The only thing is it does feel a bit wallowy.

11th Jan 2011, 07:08

I have had a 58 plate 3.0L V6 Elite Estate Auto with all the bells and whistles, xenons, parking sensors etc, for 6 months now and have covered 30,000 miles since.

Picked it up with 35,000 miles on the clock with full Vauxhall service history. It was an ex- Vauxhall Management fleet car; even had the GM Fleet badges on the number plates.

After a week of owning the car, I started to get a vibration through the steering at motorway speeds, and assumed I had thrown a balance weight. A quick trip to the tyre shop soon proved that to be wrong. I continued to use the car, and the vibration got worse and worse, until having had the Vauxhall dealership replace the EGR valve under warranty after the management light came on on the dash, the light came back on, and on investigation and a test run with the dealership, we could get the car to vibrate through the whole car at about 1500 revs in almost any gear.

The technician had said he had had this on 2 other cars, and they had replaced the manual gearbox on one with no effect.

He said he did not know, but had heard the diesel fuel pump regulator flaps had to be replaced, which was an 8 hour job and involved almost taking the engine out to get to.

He did this, and the car was fine, for about a month, and then it started again!

This time the dealership rang Vauxhall Technical.

The case number is still outstanding. For this reason, please read so carefully!.

Vauxhall have admitted that all 3.0L V6 turbo diesel engines fitted to any Vectra, at least the C anyway, but I believe all, have an inherent design fault that they cannot fix!!!

The EGR valve valve cracks open slightly once the engine is fully warm, and they have no idea why.

Essentially this means there is too much air and not enough diesel, and so at least one of the 6 cylinders does not get the right fuel mixture and misses!

This was the vibration I could feel.

It tends to come to the surface on long journeys, and as I regularly travel the whole length of the M3 and M25 and back again, about 70,000 miles a year, I was doing this quite a lot.

Eventually the EGR valve failing will wearout what I believe are called the "swirl flaps" on the diesel pump, and then the ECU goes into limp home mode and you lose the turbo, and basically most of the power. Getting up the smallest of hills becomes almost impossible.

Then you will be back to the garage for another 8 hour session, which Vauxhall say they will pay for as long as the problem has occurred either with-in the first 3 years or 60,000 miles of the cars life.

You have been warned!!!.

I have sold mine back to the garage, having lost nearly £5000 in depreciation and bought a 150BHP 1.9 diesel Elite Estate on an 07 plate with all the bells and whistles instead, and had a Thorney stage 1 upgrade done, which gives 10% better fuel economy and 185 BHP!. The best bit is because I had it done by Thorney Motorsport, Vauxhall will cover it under their warranty. Yes, that's right, 35 bhp more, 56 mpg from the estate remember, and it's all covered under Vauxhall warranty.

I am really interested to hear if any one else has had the same problem, as I have recently met 2 people independently of one another, and they both owned late plate 3.0l V6 diesel Saabs, which I believe have the same engine as the Vectra, and both of them had to get rid of them because a design fault with the engine had made them both breakdown. One of them broke down on the motorway and pulled in to the hard shoulder a little way behind another Saab, which had broken down for the same reason!!!

Like I said, you have been warned!!!

3rd Apr 2011, 04:30

It was interesting reading the last comment. I recently bought a 05 3.0 V6 auto Vectra 70k, which drove perfectly on the test drive. Driving in slow traffic at 50mph, the car selects top gear and revs at 1500 rpm, and the car then vibrates quite badly, which is obviously coming from the engine. It only does this when the engine is warmed up. It does not do this when cold. I have taken it back to the local garage, and they updated the ECU and thought it was fixed, but my next drive revealed the same problem. All other driving speeds are fine.

29th Apr 2011, 12:33

I recently bought a V6 CDTI estate SRi Satnav from 2004, and that is exactly what I experienced yesterday onwards (after putting Shell VPower Diesel in the tank instead of regular diesel BTW). Completely power loss and juddering when accelerating, in any gear. Very dangerous situation when overtaking. After research, it looks like the cost will surpass the value of the car. Can anybody help with advice? Or please let me know of a dealer who can do the job for reasonable money?

pieter@graffiti.net

28th Aug 2011, 07:02

As a 3.0L CDTI Vectra Elite Estate owner, I hope the above comments do not prevent anyone purchasing one, as I have had mine now for 3 years, and it has not missed a beat. I have had 'wheel balance' type judder at 56mph when I picked it up 3 years ago; the local garage simply updated the auto box software, which solved this issue, and it has not returned.

I bought this as I had a C-Max which kept going into limp home mode - 1.6L auto TDi, which if you Google it, you will see that there is apparently an issue with the engine / gearbox combination. Ford had the car for over 4 weeks and could not figure out what was wrong with it, so I sold it to them and bought the Vectra; best move I ever made. Together with 40% more torque thanks to a DTUK tuning box.

29th Sep 2011, 14:23

I have a 57 reg V6 CDTi with 48,000 miles on it. Had it from 12 months old with 10,000. It has always had an idling problem where the tickover drops after 20 seconds or so and the engine labours. After a further 10 seconds, the idle returns to normal. It got particularly bad last year with the EML coming on. The main dealer replaced the EGR valve under warranty, and the idle improved, but is not perfect.

About 6 weeks ago the idle deteriorated again and the EML started coming on. This time it seemed more serious, and started to misbehave at speed. A local garage failed to diagnose the problem, because their fault code reader would not communicate with the Isuzu ECU.

This fault turned out to be a split hose from the turbo to the inlet manifold. I noticed it when looking over the engine, looking for anything untoward. The split was about 2 inch long. Another dealer replaced the hose and cleared the fault codes. This dealer mentioned fault code P1110, which is inlet swirl plate sticking.

On return, the car's performance was restored, but the idle problem was still there, and the EML came on first start of the day. Cycling the ignition cleared the EML, and it was not coming on til the next morning. Last week I put Millers diesel treatment into a tank of fuel. 300 miles later and the car is running better than ever, with no sign of the poor idle and no EML. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Despite the comments from other posters, I feel this car represents excellent value for money. Engine is superb most of the time, and together with auto / climate control / leather trim, it is a very nice car.