Time for a minor rant….
I have a 2006 vauxhall combo 1.3cdti van, 58k on the clock, the engine is a joint power plant shared across the vauxhall rang but is also actually A Fiat JTD engine in reality, so I’m guessing a lot of the gearbox parts etc are on a shared basis.
In someone’s wisdom at Fiat/vauxhall/Opel they made one section of the gear linkage out of plastic ( about 6″ long two opposing ball cups at either end. This push fits onto a ball ended rid at either end of the gear linkages. Plastic against metal will as we all know (and was part of the thinking in design no doubt) wear…..resulting in one or the other or both cups popping off the metal balls. This is a known and regular part that wears out……..however as chuffin usual, you want the piece of plastic linkage from a dealer…….oh no sir, it’s £63 and you have to purchase the entire multi linkage kit, they’re very common we sell lots of them……..
Who in their right mind will pay £63 chuffin quid just for the section of plastic or spend £163 paying for an hours labour at a dealers having one fitted in enirity.
Anyway, ebay is thankfully awash with suppliers of metal retro replacements and the odd kit of plastic replacements that come with all the other bits of bloody plastic that I don’t want either……..I just wanted a new plastic linkage, by itself, no whole linkage, no full linkage bush kit with plastic arm……FFS 😈

“planned obsolescence” is the phrase I think

Have you considered that the plastic part is designed to wear and fail in order that the more expensive/non-replaceable parts of the gearbox don’t prematurely wear?

Have you ever been in a rose-jointed vehicle? It’s like being trapped IN the gearbox.

Plastic bushes on gear linkages are standard practice across all marques. They shut a load of noise down that would otherwise be destined for the cabin, they cost pence to make rather than pounds and will fail well beyond the warranty period.

Be thankful it’s not a Ford, they are the absolute masters of planned obsolescence. Now the warranty’s gone, the ford-engineered rear suspension on my Abarth is rapidly combining with the oxygen in the air & fiat forum is littered with similar tales of woe.

You bought a Vauxhall mated to a Fiat? Then ask this question?

I don’t mind stuff being designed to wear out to protect or act as a crumple zone…….but for christs sake if it’s designed to wear out manufacture and supply the part that will wear out not a whole bunch of stuff that won’t!!!!!
Oh yeah I forgot about the £90 of pure profit and keeping a technician/mechanic in a job 🙄

BTW today I paid £22.50 as the heat shield was lose in two places on my Subaru. The main dealer charged me £22.50 to diagnose, replace and fit the bolts.

You’ve been had – my local garage pulled the rattly heatshield off my car and charged me £0 🙂

but for christs sake if it’s designed to wear

no, as someone said, it’ll be designed to do something else, probably be quiet, or prevent the other parts wearing. To paraphrase you, “metal on metal as we all know, well apaprt from the OP, will wear”, and cost a lot more probably if the bits either end are more permentantly fixed into the gearbox perhapse?

You’ve been had – my local garage pulled the rattly heatshield off my car and charged me £0

Yes but did they use unicorn tears as thread-lock? 8)

Who in their right mind will pay £63 chuffin quid just for the section of plastic

Don’t buy an Audi Lamborghini, or as in my case, two.

Also, if a metal part in your gearbox wears and fails, you end up with loads of bits of metal bouncing around your gearbox, which from the point of view of not ****ing the rest of the gearbox is less than ideal.

With plastic, the bits of broken plastic are far more likely to get mashed up more themselves than do damage.

a colleague’s dad has one of those silly fast audi estate RS whatevers, he had to get some sections of the exhaust replaced and it cost him nearly £3000! Apparently they have some kind of valve inside that opens up when you boot it or put it in bell-end mode or something, which makes it stupidly expensive to replace.

The main point though is that when there’s a part that’ll wear or break faster, sell it as a standalone wherever possible, don’t make people buy more bits than they need to replace it.

Audi Lamborghini ownership – bell-end mode

Goes with the territory I’m afraid 😉

nissan are experts at this £750 for an intercooler…. crimped ends ….all of them seem to fail but apparently its not a defect…..

fuel injection pump £2,000 …..identical pump from the manufacturer…£700…….

they have some kind of valve inside that opens up when you boot it or put it in bell-end mode

Got one of those in the abarth’s exhaust. Unsurprisingly it’s rusted up solid in bell-end mode.

Got one of those in the abarth’s exhaust. Unsurprisingly it’s rusted up solid in bell-end mode.

I’d of said not so much BEM, but being Italian. You see rain is an unknown and hence unforeseen environment for Italain cars to be exposed to.

You should have seen what happens to an Alfasud, if it finds itself in the UK. They literally dissolve in UK rain, before your very eyes.

The reason you can’t get the bit seperate, is the replacement part is far more substantial and better sealed.
I’ve never seen one of the newer linkages fail, and the old ones only tend to fail on vehicles that have been abused to some degree.

BTW, the gearbox is Vauxhall. They weren’t quite stupid enough to use Fiats gearboxes aswell as their engines.

No unicorns in Scotland hora, although I don’t think they used any threadlock to yank a bit of tin and chuck it in the corner!

Same as the bike industry…we are being ripped off across the board BUT we keep paying the prices so why should the price drop?

probably because the component engineer was too lazy to release the clip by itself, or the supplier wouldn’t sell them for sensible money, or it worked out hardly cheaper to separate it, or maybe the part is not designed to be serviceable to make it cheaper in the first place, or purchasing did a deal with the supplier, orthey had a load of excess stock of the assembly, or, maybe the new part is an up issue and they have fixed it, blah blah theres a million reasons

60 odd quid for a part isnt the end of the world though

Some chucklesome replies on here, part ordered from ebay supplier…..a bush and plastic linkage kit £6 delivered plus a ‘spare’ metal version should the plastic replacement disintegrate in a week to be kept in the van for £12 (also being kept as spare to reduce any metal on metal wear or I suspect in a crash selector rods being thrown at my thighs 🙂

no unicorns in Scotland?! Don’t be daft! It’s the national animal!

You should just be very happy that the timing chain hasn’t stretched and become noisy and running poorly also the injectors havnt leaked and snapped off in the head… Flat and GM…. To change the timing chain you have to remove the engine and gearbox… Terrible idea

yes we know that, but it’s kinda like that haggis joke we keep playing…

You should have seen what happens to an Alfasud, if it finds itself in the UK. They literally dissolve in UK rain, before your very eyes.

Nothing to do with UK rain but the amount of salt we seem intent on spreading around our roads. They never had problems in Europe where alternatives are used. Fair play they did literally melt in front of you though.