Holden Colorado 2013 Problems

Most glow-plug systems in diesel cars work on a timer system. The manufacturer will have worked out that X seconds of current will heat the plugs to a temperature sufficient for easy starting, so that X-seconds period is where the timer will be set.

What happens, though, is that glow plugs can lose their efficiency over time (and with 233,000km on board, your car is a candidate for that to have happened). As that efficiency is lost, they don't produce the same amount of heat as they used to and, therefore, the timer isn't giving them long enough to heat the combustion chamber sufficiently. When that happens, the engine becomes hard to start. The other possibility is that the timer itself is faulty and isn't giving the plugs power for long enough. The fact that your engine starts easily after the first cold start of the day, suggests the glow-plugs are, indeed, at fault here.

The other possibility is that the car's electrical system is not sending enough voltage to the glow plugs to make them work properly. This can be verified quickly and easily with a voltmeter. This method can also verify the length of time the timer is supplying power to the plugs.

In vehicles where the timer has already shut off the power to the glow-plugs before enough heat has been generated, the solution is often a new set of glow-plugs. The good news is that these aren't expensive, nor are they difficult to change if you know what you're doing. The caveat is if you aren't sure of what you're doing, at which point the fuel system on a common-rial diesel injection system can be very dangerous to tamper with due to the super-high pressures involved.

A minor increase in noise when shifting to four-wheel-drive is quite a normal thing to happen. By selecting four-wheel-drive, you’re suddenly engaging the transfer-case output shaft, the front differential and the front driveshafts. So, fundamentally, there’s a lot more mechanical stuff happening, and that’s probably what you’re hearing.

But the change in noise shouldn’t be a huge one, nor should it involve a high-volume noise of any kind. If there’s something screeching, grinding or knocking when the vehicle is in four-wheel-drive, then there’s probably something wrong with the driveline. If the noises are loud or nasty, then you need to have the vehicle inspected to find the cause and fix it before it causes more damage.

There’s a chance that the battery is old enough that it won’t hold charge for long, so a check of the battery’s general health would be the first step here. Beyond that, conventional wisdom holds that there’s something in the car that’s staying on even though the ignition switch is off, and that’s what’s draining the battery.

But before drawing the latter conclusion, attend to the basics: Make sure the battery terminals are clean and tight and test the vehicle with the engine running to make sure the alternator is, in fact, charging the battery at the correct rate. Most tradesmen agree that something between 13.5 and 14.5 volts at a fast idle is about right for the alternator. While the voltmeter is hooked up, turn on the headlights and make sure that the alternator keeps up. If the voltage drops during this stress test, you could have a dodgy regulator.

If that all checks out, the usual suspects here become a stereo (particularly an aftermarket one) or an alarm system (ditto) that is draining the battery. Make sure that the ignition switch is, indeed, turning everything off and then go back and check the car in the dark to see if there’s a courtesy light or underbonnet light that’s still on and slowly sending the battery flat.

If nothing sticks out as being wrong, the next step would be to take to the car to an auto electrician who can use a multi-meter to check each circuit in the car individually until they find the one that’s energised when it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t take a huge current draw to flatten a battery or at least take it to the point where it will no longer start the car.

Ignoring this will not only eventually leave you stranded, it will send your battery to an early grave as batteries don’t appreciate being flattened over and over again.

This is a weird one. I spoke to two different Holden service workshops (former Holden dealers) and the consensus was that the reverse lights on your car are not on a separate fused circuit. Certainly there’s no mention of such a fuse in the owner’s manual. That means, then, that the reverse lights share a circuit with other functions at the rear of the vehicles, possibly the tail-light circuit. Beyond that, nobody could be specific.

In turn, that suggests that it’s not the fuse at fault because, if it was, the whole rear of the vehicle would be blacked-out. Which brings us to the possibility that the problem, rather than being a blown fuse, is rather the adjustment of the switch that recognises the car is in reverse and turns on the lights and camera. This is located on the side of the transmission and, if it’s out of alignment or showing wear in its contacts or wiring, could lead to the problem you have.

On the lower-right corner of the dashboard, you’ll find the rotary switch that controls the headlights. On the same switch panel (just to the left of the main headlight switch) are a pair of sliding controls that control the headlight aiming (the right-hand slide) and the dashboard-light brightness (just to its left).

When the car’s headlights are turned on, the dashboard lights are automatically dimmed, and sometimes this provides insufficient light to see the gauges clearly in bright daylight. But by holding the adjustment slide in the up position, you can turn the dashboard lights to their brightest level of illumination. 

As with any four-wheel-drive that is approaching middle-age, you need to treat every Colorado on its individual merits. How has it been driven? Has it been used as a work truck? Has it spent every weekend off-road?

Beyond that, the Colorado is subject to the same concerns that challenge all owners of modern, common-rail diesel engines. Those start with the soot filter which can clog up and require manual cleaning. The solution is to make sure you do at least one decent freeway journey every three or four weeks as a means of allowing the filter to regenerate as it’s supposed to.

The other thing that catches many owners out is a build up of black gunge in the engine’s inlet tract. The black ooze is a combination of oil mist from the crankcase ventilation system and soot from the exhaust (a modern engine consumes a proportion of its own exhaust gasses as an emissions-reduction measure). When these two compounds mix, the black, sticky murk is the result. If it’s bad enough it can trigger a check-engine light on the dash and can lead to poor running and fuel economy. Left long enough, the whole intake system will need to be removed and manually cleaned. An aftermarket oil separator stops this is it traps the oil mist before it can enter the engine and is a good addition to these vehicles.

I doubt that it is a low oil pressure problem; it’s more likely to be an electronic issue with the car’s computer or a sensor associated with the ECM.

You’ve had a pretty good run so far, and 133,000 km is not a lot, so I would stick with it for a while yet. But it’s a fact of motoring life that cars are likely to suffer an increasing number of problems as they get older and the kilometres are racked up. Judging the right time to get out of a car is not easy, it might be a good idea to have a mechanic give it the once over and give you an idea of how it’s going.

It’s on the surfaces most exposed to the sun, and it probably a problem with the clear coat. Have your Holden dealer check it, and perhaps show it to a painter, or pant specialist to assess the problem.

You're getting into the Colorado at about the right time, when they've done around 100,000 km. If you're going manual check the clutch, that's a bit of a weak point, but other than that go for the best car you can find. One thing to focus on is wear and tear from use as a work vehicle. Look at damage in the bed, dents and scrapes on the body from being worked hard on the job site. Overall they're a pretty good thing.