Slowly but surely (hopefully) getting there.
Battery was a software 'glitch' - bit of reprogramming, all seems to be o.k.
The vibration I got told was a characteristic of the car
They'd compared it to other cars they have and they all have vibration through the steering wheel at idle.
So I asked them if I could try this out for myself. They sat me in a car and sure enough there was some high freq vibration through the steering wheel that strengthened at around 1000rpm but it didn't feel as strong as mine. Had a check of the engine itself only to notice it was a 520 they were comparing it to.
OK, so with that baseline I went outside with the Tech boss and tried mine out. First thing he said was how much he could feel it through the floor from the passenger seat, he'd just been concentrating on the vibes through the steering wheel FFS. I only gave the steering wheel as an example of how it feels to me but did say it was the whole cabin. He sat in the back and confirmed he could feel it there too.
We then looked at the engine and he had to agree that my 6-pot was visually vibrating more than the 4-pot. First thing he said was that it was just the cover until I pointed out that any part of the engine you placed your hand on had that same strong vibration
He also agreed that a fine vibration was visible on the tail-pipes (they almost look slightly blurred)
So after head scratching and some prompting by me he's agreed to change all the mounts, engine and transmission. Unfortunately this won't happen until after my Cornish trip so I expect I'll feel like I've got MS after the trip down there but hopefully once I'm back it'll be sorted. I hope so, for the past day or so I've been pondering what brand I'd switch to if this doesn't get resolved.
Lesson learnt though, got to be extremely careful with wording as the scope of investigation appears to be incredibly narrow leaving you to have to argue and try and get some time with the tech guys themselves rather than the front-desk middleman, and even then it's a slow, steady process.
I wonder how many people are pottering around with a 'characteristic' car
