So my VF MY15 has just succumbed to this issue however Holden is saying the VIN isn't on the register. Is it a coincidence that my car is a May 15 car and the recall was only until April 15? Is it possible that my car slipped through the cracks?
It's deadset dangerous to drive and i can't even get in to Holden for another 2 weeks. Sometimes restarting the car works, other times 3 trips in a row have the error and no power steering.
Should i be going to the Ombudsmen? Can i take it to any mechanic or should i wait for the dealer to hopefully fix it under the recall/goodwill?
TLDR, expect a fight to get this major fault rectified via recall or via your statutory warranty rights in law.
Sorry for the long and convoluted post but it’s gotta be said…
It took GM/Holden a long time (years) for them to get to the point of identifying the root cause of power steering assistance failure and proposing a solution. They took three goes at a fix before they provided the real solution to this safety issue (which was a new rack update kit with gold plated pins which was handled via a voluntary recall).
Being a voluntary recall, lots of documents would have been provided to the regulators so they are across this safety issue. Our vehicle safety regulators reside within the Federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and Arts... (Yeah, such important stuff like vehicle safety gets lumped with pictures of flowers and other artsy fartsy stuff, go figure.)...
Interestingly the Department of Infrastructure has responsibility for road safety and as such they also have the
www.vehiclerecalls.gov.au website (shared responsibility with ACCc?) so in essence there are multiple ways to access the people in the know on any vehicle safety concern (and no, these people are not ombudsman’s and in essence don’t normally get involved in an individuals issues)….
But first things first, I'd check out the (really poorly written) recall notice (which sadly has a distinct and complete lack of any technical information). The recall notice is at
https://www.vehiclerecalls.gov.au/recalls/rec-000535
Within this piss poor recall notice you'll find the xlsx spreadsheet
REC-000535-VIN-List-1.xlsx which lists all vehicle VINs impacted.. So search the spreadsheet for your VIN (and the VIN ranges around yours). Ultimately you will be able to see if your VIN is included or not and may be able to guess how close to the cutout you may or may not be (but keep in mind that vehicles aren’t manufactured in an entirely sequential fashion)…
Why should you look yourself, because HCC can be clowns and on occasion not know their arse from their elbow... (I've had better luck going through the GMSV customer assistance line and explaining one of my issues as it seems the better staff were migrated to the new business and the drift wood stayed behind)...
If you do find your VIN within their recall VIN list, I'd be having rather stern words with the HCC manger (if you can ever get past the minions and speak to someone in authority, hence going via GMSV). I'd also have stern words with your selling dealer (and the dealer's Holden representative area manager if those people exist any more).
Really, if your VIN is on the list, I'd be ripping them a new one as they can't identify such a simple fact in such a safety related situations (where their incompetence is risking one’s life and the lives of one’s family members)....
But the problem could be that the safety defect is actually wider in scope (thus impacts more vehicles) than GM/Holden has initially determined. So it may be that your vehicle actually isn't on the list but has the same related problem. GM/Holden may need to investigate further but they probably don't want to investigate further and open up another expensive can of worms for themselves.... That makes it a challenge and a frustration to get them to show sense and do what’s needed.
Sadly, some of that challenge and frustration will fall on you to drive towards a solution... So I'd want to know what fault codes are associated with this EPS recall (hence the need for real technical information in recall notices) and then get your vehicle scanned to see if those fault codes are one in the same (cheap generic OBD dongles may not read the appropriate module to extract the relevant codes).
The US Chevy SS recall notice probably has more technical,info but they ran left hand drive steering racks so its not fully translatable. One of the NHTSA recall docs is
this one but there are a treasure trove of docs that list all the
recall related docs, investigations and communication related to this vehicle. It’s very unlike our piss poor regulators that allow manufacturers to hide info from the buying public
The challenge is getting the details around how to identify if you are getting one in the same fault… If it’s simply the same fault codes and your vehicle isn't on the VIN list, in theory that would be because an updated steering rack assembly with the gold plates pins that supposedly doesn't exhibit the fault was uses in manufacture, then you may indeed be having the one in the same fault. As such I'd want the version of the actually rack installed verified via physical examination. You’d want to know exactly what part number was installed in your vehicle and whether it's the old problem rack or the new supposedly good rack... Physical examination is a PITA due to access issues but you should be able to talk to the dealer/HCC about such...
If you find you have the old rack then Holden has fooked up in their back office manufacture processes and missed including your vehicle on the VIN list of impacted vehicles in their recall. Such would need to be sorted since it should be on the recall list if it has the old rack. If you do have the updated rack and you still get the same fault codes that the older faulty rack would get, it’d be a case of “Huston we have a problem” as far as Holden should be concerned (but they'd want to sweep it under the carpet)…
Such a situation requires investigation which probably requires some disassembly and Holden just want to say ”no it’s not impacted and you have another fault” which means they don’t want to fund their investigation and leave the cost to the owner…
Whatever the case, if you purchased your vehicle new or used from a dealer, your vehicle has a statutory warranty as provided by Australian Consumer Law (ACL). As such I‘d take the approach that the vehicle has suffered a major fault under ACL and I'd want it resolved as a matter of urgency via my statutory warranty (which dealers/Holden love to call good will and sometimes even try to share the costs 50/50 cause that sounds like such a grea deal…. Or… that 50/50 or some other split is just bullshite when one’s statutory warranty should cover the, 100%)…
But sadly you’re going to have to drive it one way or the other… The first part is identifying what is wrong and whether it’s this known fault that resulted in the recall or something else. Regardless, a normal consumer would expect that the steering system would work safely for 100’s of 1000’s of kms without issue so if the selling dealer and/or Holden don’t want to investigate from a recall perspective, have them investigate from an ACL statutory warranty perspective. Either way it’s Holden’s cost so expect a fight…
Separate to this angst, I'd still contact the federal office of Infrastructure to report "
potential systemic safety issues related to the design or manufacture of road vehicles" and I’d go further and report the same to ACCC re Holden’s shitfuckery around handling recall issues or related faults where the recall may not have been wide enough to capture all instances of their poor initial or improved supposedly fixed design…. Then chat to your state consumer group and get the lowdown on what your options are cause likely you’ll end up in small claims court (and a pita but at least one forum members has had success taking that path and saved some good coin in the process…
here is his thread )…
e1.pcloud.link
