Ask The Guide

Any time you have a grinding noise from the driveline of a car, it’s time to have it checked out. That’s because continuing to drive it in that condition might cause more damage than was already there. Grinding sounds from the area of the transmission can indicate worn bearings in the gearbox which, if caught early enough can sometimes be replaced without resorting to a complete transmission replacement. Even so, it will be a big job as the gearbox will need to be removed and pulled apart.

You may also find while you’re inside the transmission that there’s other wear that needs to be addressed, at which point the decision becomes whether to repair or replace. You can buy a reconditioned transmission from a specialist shop, or a second-hand one from what was once called a wrecking yard. If you do the latter, make sure the used gearbox has been tested and comes with some sort of warranty. The cost of a replacement could be anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 depending on what you buy and where you buy it from.

The driver’s window of the average car does a lot more work than any of the other power windows on board. What can happen over time is that the tracks the window glass runs in become clogged with dust and debris or simply go dry, meaning there’s excess friction when the glass is trying to change position. Thanks to gravity, this is usually most often seen when trying to raise the glass.

You can try a dry lubricant spray which typically contains graphite to grease the tracks slightly, but don’t overdo it. And try to avoid liquid lubricants as these will smear the glass. If that doesn’t work, you may have to take the door and glass apart to find the problem. It could also be that the electric motor that does the work of moving the glass is worn and not providing the necessary power.

In the meantime, you can help the motor by grabbing the top of the glass and using a little elbow grease to help it make the journey. Just make sure you don’t get your fingers in the way as the window shuts.

Squeaks from the engine bay are often caused by worn drive belts, their pulleys and tensioners. You might even have a worn power steering pump, water pump or air-conditioning compressor that is giving off the odd squeak or groan. It’s worth tracking down, though, as should any of these components seize or snap, you could be left stranded.

Check around the water pump for any sign of moisture. At the bottom of the pump housing near the front of the engine, there should be what’s called a 'weep hole’. Any dampness here suggests a pump that’s already leaking and could let go any time, perhaps without further warning.

Even an air leak in any of the car’s vacuum systems (including the one that powers the brakes) can sound like a squeak or squeal, so check all the rubber lines for splits or holes and also that they’re tightly secured to their respective fittings.

Don’t forget to look for any evidence of chafing or rubbing together of various parts. This can also create odd noises.

There are a couple of issues here. The first is that your mechanic may not have the correct scanning tool to be able to interrogate the car’s on-board computer to check for fault codes. And without the correct one, you won’t get far down that track. However, it’s worth following that route as it’s the best, most efficient way to find out what’s really going on inside the car.

Ironically, the same scanning tool required will probably also be able to turn the transmission warning light off. But turning the light off is not the solution; you need to know what triggered the warning in the first place and attend to that. Otherwise the light will keep cropping up, regardless of how often you turn it off.

Continuing to drive with a warning light illuminated risks doing more damage to the vehicle in the long run. Something is not right in your car’s driveline and the car knows it. But you’ll need the right mechanic with the right tools to be able to know what the fault is and how to fix it.

Your car has an engine Suzuki calls K12C which is a member of the Dual Jet family. That means it does, indeed, have a pair of fuel injectors for each cylinder. It’s conceivable that one set of the injectors is not seating properly or not getting the correct signal to shut off from the computer and that is filling the cylinders with fuel. This may happen until the pressure in the fuel rail dies off, or it could continue dripping all night.

If this is what’s happening, then you shouldn’t attempt to start the car as, should there be enough fuel inside the cylinders, the engine could hydraulically lock, potentially bending con-rods and destroying the entire engine.

How have you diagnosed this as the problem? Have you removed the injectors and had them checked or tested? This sounds like a pretty odd sort of problem for a car as new as this.

The other possibility is that the injectors are getting a computer signal they shouldn’t and leaking as a result. This is a tempting theory as it might also explain why the fan continues to run with the engine switched off. However, it pays to remember that many cars will continue to run their cooling fan after the ignition has been turned off as a way of reducing the temperature of the engine, even though it’s stopped. This should have no effect on the injectors, though.

This mightn’t be too hard to figure out as the GU Patrol used a purely mechanical engagement system for the transfer case and four-wheel-drive system. Unlike newer designs with rotary knobs and electronic control, there’s really not to much to go wrong with the Patrol’s setup assuming it’s a selector problem. Make sure the selector rods are all connected properly and that they’re not binding or loose under the car.

However, if the lever is engaging and the front drive-shaft is not turning the front wheels, then you may have a hub problem. Free-wheeling hubs are great for saving fuel, but when they go wrong, it can often mean the drive doesn’t reach the front wheels. At that point, you have a bigger job on your hands. The same symptoms could also be a result of a broken front differential which is not sending the drive out to the front wheels. Finally, the transfer-case itself may be at fault. If it’s not sending the drive forward, there’s no way the vehicle will achieve four-wheel-drive.

Also, to maximise your chances of engaging four-wheel-drive, make sure the vehicle is stationary at the time and the transmission is in neutral. In fact, this is essential for moving between two and four-wheel-drive in many types of off-roader.

This era of Australin Fords had a bit of a habit of having their body computers go on the blink. When that happened, a whole bunch of things could start acting up, but the central locking was a prime suspect.

When a car thinks it has a door, bonnet or bootlid opened, it will often refuse to lock, preferring instead to warn the driver that the car is not secure. And when the body computer is confused, it can interpret a closed door as an open one. But before you take it to an auto electrician to be sorted, try this: Take a can of lubricating spray and apply some to the little door sensor inside the door jamb. This is the micro switch that tells the computer what’s going on, and if the switch is full of dust or jammed, that won’t happen. Sometimes freeing the switch will make the problem go away.

The other thing to try is to disconnect the car’s battery and leave it overnight before reconnecting it. Sometimes this will actually reset the body computer. It doesn’t work every time, but sometimes it will do the trick.

This is a curly one isn’t it? You stand a decent chance of returning the info screen back into English, only if it’s already in English so you can drill down into the menus in the first place. You might be able to flick through the menus until you find the word 'English' (start in Settings if you can decipher even that much). Perhaps the owner’s manual gives some insight into how the language is set.

But, honestly, the quicker way is likely to be to take the vehicle to an LDV dealer and have somebody familiar with the menu system sort it out for you.

It’s tempting to think that this might happen every time you change or disconnect a battery, but who knows? Equally, it could be a glitch within the car’s body computer that controls the dashboard and many other functions in a modern car.

This engine has a reputation for failed EGR valves which are part of the emissions control system and live within the rocker cover. Without this valve working properly, the car’s tailpipe emissions can be higher than they should be, as well as causing the oil leak you’ve noted. And any time you have oil hitting a hot exhaust system, there’s the potential for a fire.

In some cases you can simply change the EGR valve, but experience suggests that with some engines, the solution is to replace the entire rocker cover which will incorporate a new EGR valve. The parts can usually be bought online.

Something, somewhere in the vehicle (probably the driveline) is causing the car to go into what’s called limp-home mode. This is designed to limit speed and power and, therefore, protect the vehicle from further damage due to the original problem.

You may have a fuel problem or an exhaust problem or maybe there’s something wrong with the emissions control system, or even a simple electrical sensor that’s faulty. The point being that you won’t know what the actual problem is until you scan the vehicle to see what the computer has seen going wrong. Until then, you’re just guessing and the vehicle will continue to go into limp-home mode. These problems don’t fix themselves.