Clio III auto
Hi all,
This is my first post on this forum, so I may make mistakes or post in the wrong areas - I'm sorry if I do. I'm looking forward to talking in here about my Clio
I've recently been able to buy a car to learn to drive in, with financial help from my parents. It's a 2006 Renault Clio, 3rd generation, with a 1.6L 16V(?) engine and an automatic gearbox. It's a lovely car, although the previous owners weren't so great on maintaining it.
I've noticed a few issues which I'm planning to get fixed (heater, tracking etc), but during a service - cambelt, oil change etc, the mechanic servicing it found a serious issue. While driving it into his garage, it made a large BANG noise, before showing a "Check Gearbox" fault on the dashboard.
He's managed to drive it into his garage, where he's plugged in an OBD scanner (?), which revealed a *lot* of errors, most of which indicated issues with the wheel speed sensors. He's replaced one of the wheel speed sensors (which he suspected was faulty), but it made no difference to these errors.
He's driven it a few times in order to see if these errors go away or change, and he's noticed that when he exceeds 45mph or so, it'll show the "Check Gearbox" fault again, but it'll continue to drive fine. The only thing he has noticed is that it takes a little longer to go into different gears (ie Reverse into Drive). I've also noticed that when this fault shows up, the car seems to want to go up a gear, but seemingly can't? The mechanic also mentioned that when the "Check Gearbox" fault shows up, turning the ignition off and on again fixes it temporarily. He seems to think it's either an electrical fault somewhere (possibly a damaged / loose wire), or that the gearbox oil hasn't been changed at all. I'm definitely concerned about the gearbox, since for 4 years (from 2018 to 2022), the MOT history reported an oil leak (in 1 of the years, it reported as "Leaking from the transmission").
It has passed its recent MOT (lasts until November 2026), so I can't imagine it's overly serious, but I'm still a bit concerned that it's damaged, and that driving it will only make it worse. Please forgive any assumptions or mistakes I've made - I only know a little about cars, and I'm really worried my first car will have to be scrapped or will be really expensive to fix.
Thank you
This is my first post on this forum, so I may make mistakes or post in the wrong areas - I'm sorry if I do. I'm looking forward to talking in here about my Clio
I've recently been able to buy a car to learn to drive in, with financial help from my parents. It's a 2006 Renault Clio, 3rd generation, with a 1.6L 16V(?) engine and an automatic gearbox. It's a lovely car, although the previous owners weren't so great on maintaining it.
I've noticed a few issues which I'm planning to get fixed (heater, tracking etc), but during a service - cambelt, oil change etc, the mechanic servicing it found a serious issue. While driving it into his garage, it made a large BANG noise, before showing a "Check Gearbox" fault on the dashboard.
He's managed to drive it into his garage, where he's plugged in an OBD scanner (?), which revealed a *lot* of errors, most of which indicated issues with the wheel speed sensors. He's replaced one of the wheel speed sensors (which he suspected was faulty), but it made no difference to these errors.
He's driven it a few times in order to see if these errors go away or change, and he's noticed that when he exceeds 45mph or so, it'll show the "Check Gearbox" fault again, but it'll continue to drive fine. The only thing he has noticed is that it takes a little longer to go into different gears (ie Reverse into Drive). I've also noticed that when this fault shows up, the car seems to want to go up a gear, but seemingly can't? The mechanic also mentioned that when the "Check Gearbox" fault shows up, turning the ignition off and on again fixes it temporarily. He seems to think it's either an electrical fault somewhere (possibly a damaged / loose wire), or that the gearbox oil hasn't been changed at all. I'm definitely concerned about the gearbox, since for 4 years (from 2018 to 2022), the MOT history reported an oil leak (in 1 of the years, it reported as "Leaking from the transmission").
It has passed its recent MOT (lasts until November 2026), so I can't imagine it's overly serious, but I'm still a bit concerned that it's damaged, and that driving it will only make it worse. Please forgive any assumptions or mistakes I've made - I only know a little about cars, and I'm really worried my first car will have to be scrapped or will be really expensive to fix.
Thank you
