City Coupe Passion 450 How to Sell!

[TheAlmostInvisibleMan]

As said, the garage may just be assuming it’s seized , either because they’re unused to a hidden away engine like the smart, or they have spotted low oil and assumed it again.
If the car has been sat not used , the alternator is a very likely candidate ... but obviously if the oil isn’t on the dipstick at all, then a seized engine isn’t an unlikely outcome.

So check/confirm the oil level yourself today... then proceed to removing the alternator belt to check that the alternator runs freely, you should be able to turn alternator by hand with no belt on.... and yes a seized alternator is known on the smart to stop it in its tracks.

[137699]

So... 2 days on.... did you take advice about the alternator? What's the outcome?

[BecksClandrew]

Hello All,

Apols for the delayed update my father-in-law is a very busy man and it's taken him a while to get to it.

Drumroll.........IT WAS THE ALTERNATOR! We think the garage was just being lazy for diagnosis so they've just lost some customers. We've fixed it. Thank you so much for your responses you've saved my little car

The sad news is that we've decided to sell the car anyway. Now it's getting older the car is likely to become less reliable - it is the car we use for longer distances as our other car is an electric (great around town and for short distances; low speed required to get anything decent out of mileage on the motorway not ideal plus having to fast charge makes it impractical). Secondarily, my father-in-law, like the garage, isn't too enamoured of working on it. He is a busy man and having to be without a car for as long as we have been now isn't ideal.

We'll now be able to sell it to a good home for a higher price so thank you all for your interest and advice - expect an advert for it in the sales section here in the next few days.

Love to you all.

Becks

[uyn178]

Glad we came up with the correct diagnosis!

Why sell it if you have fixed it? Any old car you get will have things go wrong (happens to new cars as well you know)!

What makes you think it will be more unreliable than it has been? If you know it has something that should be fixed - get it fixed and at least you know everything should be serviceable - which you won't know if you buy another car, at least for a while.

John

[dpmike]

Why sell it if you have fixed it? Any old car you get will have things go wrong (happens to new cars as well you know)!

What makes you think it will be more unreliable than it has been? If you know it has something that should be fixed - get it fixed and at least you know everything should be serviceable - which you won't know if you buy another car, at least for a while.

That's more or less what I was saying in post #8. But I suspect this decision may be partly to do with driving longer distances, where something a bit bigger may be more suitable, as well as being trickier to work on than a more ordinary car.

[Mjolinor]

Well I have just taken the engine out of a 2005 Discovery 3 and believe me when I say that anything on a Smart car is orders of magnitude easier than that. I have never seen so little space on anything.

[BecksClandrew]

I would prefer to keep it, but in my father-in-law's words, "it is approaching the age where it will become a labour of love". We can't really be without a car for too long so having a car in this category will not be something we can easily do. If we had another petrol car it probably wouldn't be a consideration, but as we don't it is something we need to bear in mind. Also, not having a smart specialist garage anywhere near us and having to wait for my father-in-law to fix it is not something we can cope for an extended period of time.

We will be hanging onto the car for the time being while we make the final decision as we have it up and running again. We'll be looking for another smart car when the time comes to sell it. I like them. Especially as the car park I use has very narrow spaces!

[dpmike]

We'll be looking for another smart car when the time comes to sell it. I like them. Especially as the car park I use has very narrow spaces!

Well bear in mind that the latest model, 453, is a lot wider

[BecksClandrew]

Well bear in mind that the latest model, 453, is a lot wider

We'd be going for a second-hand 451 I think - not sure I like the newest ones. They seem to be trying to be cool, and I left that world behind when I left secondary school.

[TheAlmostInvisibleMan]

Having one or two of every one along the years since 2002/mk5, the new one isn’t that wider and it’s still cool