Hello All!

Had my car for about 6 months, in that time I have spent an absolute fortune on it (around £2000 to be exact.. which on a car that cost £4000 seems huge!).

I had it booked in to get the lower arm, CV boot and rear anti-rollbar link changed as it had those issues. 2 days before it went in the front drivers side light went out (the whole mechanism), the engine decided to start not playing ball on starting up (taking ages to start) and the engine struggled and juddered above 2500/3000rpm under load of acceleration. (making a 200 miles journey home on motorways with lots of weight, LOADDDS of fun.)

The car went in and for the sum of £800, the garage apparently fixed everything, including doing a full service (they changed the spark plugs too - mine is the engine which you have to disassemble the top of the engine to change them apparently - which is why it cost so much money - however it hadn't had them changed so with the cold weather coming I felt it best to get this done). It came back but suddenly the engine management light started coming up saying 'emissions' - last time this happened the EGR valve was loose. The engine still struggled but less so - it got worse so I took it back. They reset the light and it went away.. but then it came back.

It was nothing major, something I could live with. However, earlier today my engine took a major turn for the worse. It developed a major major misfire, no power.. but no warning lights either.. bar the already illuminated engine check emissions light (odd). It was very lumpy, the engine was shaking around the enginebay like mad.. it sounded like it was misfiring heavily.. and it sounded like the pistons were knocking too. I rung my old next door neighbor who's a mechanic and asked for him to have a look - he couldn't sus out exactly what it was - however when he took the oil cap off while the engine was running, oil spat out out everywhere with steam following it. The car is also horrifically gassy, I'm getting about 15mpg, and it's eaten all of its oil.

Any idea what this could be?

The car has 210,000, but a full service history - only had faults since using this garage. It's done 800 miles since the service.. surely this is something they could've spotted?

Darn VAGS!