Sold in a car park
▶ Our project Nissan Qashqai 1.2 DIG-T was sold recently to a Alan Poole – a long-term CM reader. Alan was looking for a replacement motor after many years running a Renault Laguna diesel. I had agreed a price with Alan and decided to fully valet the Nissan on a Sunday, using step-ladders to clean and polish the panoramic glass roof area. It took me all day but it did look splendid.
On the Tuesday I had to move the Qashqai to get a fresh set of tyres fitted. The dashboard lit up with all manner of faults – system fault, chassis control fault, traction control on, ABS lit – and Stop-start flashing.
My code reader wouldn’t talk to the ECU for some reason. As it was on the original Nissan 12V battery, I decided to renew it with an EFB 096 battery from Halfords – £121 down to £96 by using the Halfords Trade Card. That didn’t cure anything.
The two front tyres were moved to the back of the Qashqai and two new tyres fitted to the front. I’m unsure if the TPMS light was on before this happened, but it certainly was now. And the dashboard tyre pressure read-out was showing 33psi on the back, when that figure should be on the front. I did go back to the tyre depot, but they just checked the pressures – I couldn’t get through to them that diagnostics was probably required to recode the TPMS. With the other faults showing, I decided to drive off, thinking it can be sorted later.
Anyway, to cut a long story short – on the Friday I drove five hours non-stop to Wetherby services on the M1 to meet Alan and his wife. We’d already discussed the brightly lit dashboard lights – and I had said to Alan to take the ‘running perfectly’ Qashqai to the main dealer for investigation. As we live in the modern world, Alan had already transferred a deposit to my bank account a few weeks earlier – it was now a case of transferring a substantial amount in the car park of the M1 services – within seconds my mobile said I had received the funds. Obviously, I trusted these people – this might not work for everyone!
Alan made the two-hour drive back home and booked a time slot in with Nissan. They found the offside rear ABS sensor wire was broken and made a repair – as well as recoding the TPMS and newly-fitted 12V battery. We wish Alan happy motoring...