1ST MOT AND... FAILED MISERABLY!

I've had my 33/50 for 8 months and have only driven 1,935 miles. Service not due before March 2015 (or 24,005 miles) but as she had to be MOTed on Dec. 11th, took her to a Renault dealership yesterday for both MOT and service.
Phone call this morning from the garage... failed! :x
Failed on suspension joints, apparently due to cover failure allowing the ingress of dirt.
Not impressed! The car has only done 19,198 miles since brand new!
Will be comforted if the warranty pays up as the Renault dealer assured me. Otherwise he said it would cost me £500 for those bits alone!
I am gutted! Such a low mileage and the ball joints playing up!?
On top of it all, because it is the weekend, he will not have the parts before Tuesday.

Let's hope that the warranty will indeed cover the cost...

they will and if you have read a bit on our forums you will know it is a little "child" disease with the Twingo RS , even if they do not make it under warrenty talk on this
post on our forum they will gladly help you around or maybe read a bit more to see what other people did to get it fixed

suspension-and-brakes/suspension-bushings-t2955.html?hilit=balljoints

Its a fairly well known fault and RUK have been quite good sorting it out. Even covering part of the cost for a few which were out of warranty.

sorry to hear it failed, i told my mechanic to check mine before mot and he laughed saying they wouldn't fail especially as it had only done 13k, he took all his words back after he checked

neil, yes they have been good at replacing, still annoys me they say there isn't a problem or an upgraded part last time i checked :S see how long these ones last

GhostZ":15kzscam said:

they will and if you have read a bit on our forums you will know it is a little "child" disease with the Twingo RS , even if they do not make it under warrenty talk on this
post on our forum they will gladly help you around or maybe read a bit more to see what other people did to get it fixed

suspension-and-brakes/suspension-bushings-t2955.html?hilit=balljoints

Click to expand...

Thank you GhostZ. I had read several articles on this site but nothing related to the Twingo Silverstone in particular. I learnt even more with the link you included!
I am not very optimistic though as someone wrote he/she had the trick happened 3 times to him/her!

Anyway, as I've left my car at the garage till they fix it when they receive the part on Tuesday, I shall see what they come up with.

singlespeed":1ja0z18d said:

Its a fairly well known fault and RUK have been quite good sorting it out. Even covering part of the cost for a few which were out of warranty.

Click to expand...

Again, reading the forums I am not impressed with my Renault service manager who said he was very surprised at the failure of these ball joints.

manofhow":v1jz1msj said:

sorry to hear it failed, i told my mechanic to check mine before mot and he laughed saying they wouldn't fail especially as it had only done 13k, he took all his words back after he checked

neil, yes they have been good at replacing, still annoys me they say there isn't a problem or an upgraded part last time i checked :S see how long these ones last

Click to expand...

Thanks for the condoleances Just seems a bit of a bummer if every year I have to replace these ball joints!

The replacements with -A embossed into the arm seem to be much better

For extra protection you could install ball joint cover shields, they are quite cheap (I don't remember the price but they all together came up to about 15€).

suspension-and-brakes/lower-balljoint-shield-t12234.html

Well, at least some good news.
Got my car back today. Renault did pay for the wishbone.
We (my partner and I) also saw the damaged joint; it was badly split and totally degraded.

By any chance, does anybody know the email address of Renault custom service, please?

My 133 Gordini had the exact same problem around the first MOT and Renault fixed it a month out of warranty. Car had 1,000 miles on the clock at the time.

Yet another one! And then Renault says it's very unusual. What a joke!