Not sure if Zafiras suffer the same as Vectras...
But it's pretty well documented on most Vectra forums about blocked drain holes in the scuttle
These block causing water to go down the pollen filter
Soak the fan motor which in time seize's the motor
Which causes issues with resistors blowing etc etc

So if you can't be Ar!ed to clear drain holes of leaves, which in turn causes other issues... Surely it's the owners fault?
Hardly Vauxhalls fault imo
If a owner can't be bothered to maintain their car it's tough sh!t...

It's not just Vauxhalls that suffer leaks through pollen filters...

 

I'm not surprised more have gone up in flames, i bet there are loads of people that will be after 'compensation' from vauxhall after insurance jobbing their own cars.

If vauxhall aren't recalling them all straight away, they're probably fairly confident that the problem is due to poor maintenance/cheap aftermarket parts rather than an actual design fault.

 

Heard that if the cars parked at a certain angle, causing water to pool in the scuttle and then getting into the fan motors, which then rust and seize up?
Seems to be more and more stuff, with people saying all sorts... Until Vauxhall find the exact cause, I'm sure they'll be loads more theories!!

 

of course any genuine reason to claim will bring out those who simply fancy a con but the vast majority were all serviced at vaux themselves and burnt out parts were all found to be OE in forensics lab

 

From what I have seen the cars that have caught fire are towards the older end of the scale and outside the manufacturers warranty. So even if they had been serviced at Vauxhall who is to say they have had the manufacturers recommended service or one of the masterfit type value service and mot's done that's basically a oil and filter change and a new air filter and when the likes of a.pollen filter and spark plugs are advised the customer has refused.

 

I check the drain holes on my 5 series every time I service it. It just seems less hassle than frying the I drive ecu.

 

defo chris but one was serviced by vaux 2 weeks prior to fire and had a full history at that dealership from new and was owned by a retired barrister, I guess and nice claim will be heading vaux's way for that one

 

Well the latest update on this is that vauxhall seem that confident its not the genuine resistors catching fire ect they only checking them and replacing if non genuine resistors are fitted or if another issue is found so i wonder if the chap mentioned above who has full vaux service history has ever had pollen filter changes?

 

watched the watchdog thing and i have to say, it's very biased towards the owners and against vauxhall

even though they did say that it was down to poor maintenance and non genuine parts being fitted

 

HA!

I thought it was a load of tosh, until a guy I work with came in and said his dads had just caught fire. It did NOT have an after market heater pack.

Really scary thing is that a couple of reports say that the doors dead locked when the loom melted trapping people in the car. Not very nice.

 

so what the internet has taught us is the following:

leaves and twigs and stuff block drainage channels because no one cleans their car

pollen filters don't get changed because tight owners don't want to pay for the extra to get them changed

water rusts out the heater blower fan

this overheats the resistor

the location of this is close to the pollen filter

so when it gets hot it sets fire to the crap in the filter and therefore ends the life of yet another zafira

of course i could be wrong because i've listened to the internet

 

Sounds pretty believable to me dojj.

 

I see on tonights watchdog vauxhall have finally announced they are recalling the zafira, took the scumbags long enough

 

so they've bowed down to the few people who've not maintained their vehicles, who have skimped on servicing, declined the cost of changing filters to save money, used after market parts on their and then, when their cars catch fire, have blamed the manufacturer?

and the manufacturer is the scumbag?

 

At least they have admitted there is a problem.

 

plenty of the cases forensic investigated were fitted with OE parts and maintained by vauxhall themself, and yes vauxhall is a scummy company to deal with so

 

At least it's not VW eh lol

 

I don't think thats the case at all? Chap I know who's dads Zafira caught fire had it properly serviced by Vauxhall, Vauxhall replaced the heater controller and then the thing caught fire.

My car had a full BMW service history from new and they never once changed the pollen filter!

So yes, if a pretty modern car catches fire I would tend to blame the manufacturer! There should be multiple safe guards in place to stop the heater motor from over heating for a start.

 

But would you also agree that so many cases having the same fault in such a short space of time is a bit too much of a coincidence?

 

Yes I would, I would say that say that Vauxhall have over looked some serious aspects of the design and as such it is not a coincidence that a number of cars are starting to fail at a similar time.

Cars catching fire due to electrical faults is totally not acceptable and Vauxhall should have included features in the design to disable things like a seized fan.

If you go even further back, why were people fitting aftermarket resistor packs in the first place? Because the original and probably massively overpriced Vauxhall part repeatedly failed prematurely. If they had designed that properly so they didn't fail people wouldn't have replaced it with a cheap part etcetc.

You can look at it from lots of angles, but for sure I can say that if my missus had a car that caught fire because of something as simple as a pollen filter being blocked, or because I hadn't cleaned out the drain tubes (seriously who thinks to do that?) I would be pretty fucking pissed off.

 

but the point i'm making is that why have cars that range from 10 years old to 1 year old catching fire at the same time

they didn't change the design in those 9 years and yet everyone's caught fire in the past few weeks

which would suggest something else is amiss

 

Yea, I get what your saying. Really I am saying something similar. To me that points to a design flaw, in that something is catastrophically failing before the end of the vehicles life. Thats why multiple cars of similar ages are being affected now.

Also, its the start of winter so people have just started using their fan heaters more.

Either way, if Vauxhall wrote "Please change your pollen filter every year or your car might suddenly catch fire, dead lock the doors and kill you" then perhaps they would have a leg to stand on.

As it is I really don't think they have anything to argue against. They have made a product which clearly has the potential to catch fire and hurt people, they had the opportunity at the time of design to install devices like a thermal cut out on the heater fan and they did not.


And besides, if it was a servicing issue with cheap arsed owners not servicing their cars properly, every Nissan Micra on the planet would have exploded years ago

 

Thinks it's more about damage limitation than actually having to do so

But if they are going to Save lives it will make them look good