At least I'm not carless.. but what really caused the fire?

This white Latio is my new car..



No, not really.. it is a temporary car for me to use. My poor car will be out for a week or two due to the freak incident. So i have requested for a replacement car from Nissan. At least the GM is nice enough to grant me this. So now I'm driving a Latio 1.8, which is bigger and more powerful than my March.

Now, what's happened to my car? Why did it the battery wiring burst into flame? And do I get any compensation bearing in mind it's a new car (five months old to be exact).

All these questions, which were a mystery last night when the incident happened, are still inconclusive. But now I was told by the car technician from preliminary examination, it was not manufacturer defect but was caused by human error. He said that the harness and wires (I think that's what they're called) fastening the batteries were not even tight thus over time, the battery positioning had moved and finally when I turned that corner caused the hot wires to short-circuit and thus the fire and smoke..

But even before he told me this, he had asked about whether i changed my car battery which I told him affirmatively no. Then as I was on my way to the service centre, I suddenly remembered something. Besides sending my car for servicing twice, there was this one time in between the two servicing that I went and bought a honk (ya, I didn't like the weak sound of the original honk) and got the accessory shop workman to install it for me there and then. I had bought extra honk for all my cars before. In fact for the last car - the RAV 4 - I had inserted the honk and then removed it cos it was too loud! Thus I never thought there would be any `danger' in doing this.

I was honest and told the technician about this and I don't know whether this has created a perfect `scapegoat' for them or it was just the truth, he was almost blaming the battery short-circuit entirely to the car accessory workman. As he said for servicing, the workmen would not touch the battery nor the wires..

So if what he said is true, that means they are not liable at all and I became the one that has `breached' the contract of warranty. :( And it is useless to go back to that car accessory as they would not claim responsibility as there was also no prove of what they've done - that was at easily 3 months plus ago i think.. :(

But again, we are still just making deduction and speculation. This morning, the technician and workmen only looked at the surface `evidence' as they had not done thorough inspection on the car..

As the GM passed me the `courtesy car', he said he would try to help me but he also said point blank confidently that it could not be a manufacturer effect. Someone must have inadvertently done something to the wiring and it's very likely to be the person(s) installing the honk..

Sigh, I have not much a case cos even deep down, I feel and fear that's the case. So what I could do was asked him to help if they could absorb the cost for repair. At the same time, I still want a thorough investigation as to exactly how that incident happen.

In the mean time, at least I have a car to drive.. for the next three days I really need a car to go around!!