the ird on my 2000 1.8 freelander went recently, and being a builder and not a mechanic there was no way i was going to try and do it myself! i put the car into the nearest garage to where it broke down which was an official opel service gragage(i live in spain)
i sourced a replacement ird second hand from ebay as the scrapyards here didnt have any and a new one was over a grand and had it sent over. when he had fitted it the mechanic called me and said that it was working ok but i needed a new gearbox too, nightmare..but i got on with it found a gearbox again on the internet and sent it too him.
on fitting the new gearbox he tells me that when testing the two together he heard a loud banging from the bottom of the car and sure enough the casing of the ird was cracked and spilling oil out. now he is saying that this has happened because the replacement ird i bought must have been faulty and all he meant when he had previously told me it was ok is that it 'looked' ok.
i have no reason to mistrust the guy i bought it from as i bought it as working and the fella has masses of positive feedback on ebay and not one thing negative, which leads me to believe this mechanic could have mis diagnosed the problem. 1000 euro's later and my car is if anything worse than it was when he started!!
i am reading lots of posts about the v.c.u being a known killer of i.r.d units...is it possible that this is the problem?? this of course would make him responsible for breaking my new ird and i could claw back a bit of money at least...he hasnt once mention this section of the car, i have been under the car and to the untrained eye it all looked o.k but i am no mechanic.
please please any advice on this would be very much apreciated, as i cannot afford to buy yet another ird just for him to break again because he hasnt fixed the real problem:(