Hello all,
A few years ago, my wife purchased an 08 Astra XR before I could stop her. The thing ran fine until I was on I10 in Houston (I live in Tucson) and cost me $900 for a new fuel injector pack from a dealer. FF to 2 years ago and the battery started to die. The mechanic who said he could fix it asked me to take it back after 2 months and a partially installed steering column. I brought it and a new battery to a GMC dealer and 4 weeks later and much whining and flailing about from the Service Manager, I get it back running and apparently in the same condition as when she bought it (tire pressure light, traction control light and airbag light on constantly when running) and driving fine. After a day, the horn started to honk when I touched certain segments of the steering wheel, but I could drive it if I pressed the top half of the wheel at all times. It would start to honk at random times during the night and when the sun hit it this morning it went on and on. I pulled the wire from the horn and drove to the dealer who, actually during this process was very helpful, looked at me as if I was a special child and said the only thing that would fix it is a code reader with a particular chip that apparently was only used in Canada and possibly at some clandestine repair shop somewhere in the US.
SO, after all that, does anyone know where one of these rare and mysterious scanners would be or where in the southern tier of the US, or any tier really, I might find one?
My wife really like the car and I would like to not have the horn go off on a state road in the desert behind a motorcycle club.

 

OOPS! One change to what I wrote. It isn't a scanner but a programmer with a special Canadian? chip that the dealers do not have.

 

The Astra is a rare car with only 30,000 sold in the US and Canada for the years 08-10. Finding any dealer that can work on it is going to be difficult. The car is an orphan that is 15 years old now. The dealers may not be willing or able to connect it to their mainframe network for programming. The last time I took a GM car to the dealer for programming a pcm they connected it to the main GM computer network. They did not use a hand held scantool or laptop.

 

Join the astra forums in the UK.
You will probably get hazed but after that you'll get the information you're after. Granted the programs downloaded to the ECM and BCM are not the same across the pond, but the equipment to download them is either available or at least they can tell you what you are looking for.

There is a slim chance that you may find, through these forums, a company that collects information about your vehicle and pre-programs a new ECM and new BCM, sends them to you, you install and send the originals back as cores. Wouldn't hurt to check out if there are any us or Canada based Astra forums.

I'm reasonably sure there is an extra translation module that is needed to talk to the Astra. The UK and Canadian people will know what this is.

 

Thanks. All good info. I guess I need to find a Canadien.club. Wish me luck.

 

Wow, sounds to me like you'd be better off scrapping it and finding her something else to drive. I won't give any recommendations because there's always someone who hates whatever else brand a lot of us may also own. It's up to the two of you what you do.

 

RubeHaySeed,

I've often thought about it, scrapping it I mean, but for me, it's just sentimental reasons that I dont, but for someone who just needs a running driving car, no it definitely WOULD NOT be worth it. Unfortunately that's exactly what makes parts hard to come by, is that they are easier scrapped than fixed. It's a shame Saturn went under when they did, right when these cars were produced in the States, they would have been competitors with the VW Golf and similar.

But it is what it is. I bet 5 more years and I might be the only one left that owns one. Although, it may still not be running... Lol

 

SWS,

I moved your post to its own sticky in the Astro section which is why it's not here anymore. You now own the record for the shortest time between posting and creating a sticky on this forum.

Although not useful for your resume and has a cash equivalent of 1/10 of one cent like a coupon, you should still be proud. And if you are still working on that vehicle after 2 years of downtime, we both know you're not going to stop and unless you go bankrupt or get hit by an Astra.

Power to ya