LDV T60 Problems

Conventional wisdom suggests that a fusible link failure is most likely to be caused by either an overloading of the circuit in question, or a short-circuit in that same circuit. The starter motor of a car (especially a modern diesel) consumes a lot of power to make it turn the engine over and that means a lot of load being placed on the electrical circuit. The fusible link is there to act as a fuse and sacrifice itself to prevent damage to the rest of the starter-motor system.

Sometimes, the fusible link can blow by chance or if there’s a momentary spike in the power entering the circuit. If the link continues to blow after being replaced, then you need to start searching for a short-circuit or another problem with the wiring.

It’s not a problem and is actually completely normal. What’s happening is that the car’s computer is detecting that the engine or transmission (or both) are hot enough that they need a little extra cooling. That’s why the electric fan comes on. It stays on for a minute or so after the engine is shut down to try to bring down temperatures a little more in anticipation that you may return to the car and restart it in the next few minutes.

It’s not that the vehicle is overheating, but modern cars are all about efficiency and thermal management is a big part of that. The fan is more likely to come on if you’ve just spent a few minutes idling at a red light or driving slowly through a car-park to your eventual parking spot. Low (or no) speeds mean there’s little to no air passing through the car’s radiator, so the fan switches on to create some airflow of its own.

The first question is have you tried changing the setting on the throttle controller? The U4 setting on this unit is slightly towards the lazy side of throttle response. Maybe a switch to U8 or U9 will give the throttle response the perkiness you are looking for.

A poor quality snorkel can definitely impede airflow and, therefore, power production, but so can a poor tune, dirty fuel filter, worn injectors, worn fuel pump, a blocked DPF, gummed up intake manifold and about a thousand other things. Is the turbocharger working properly and all the associated plumbing tight and leak-free? This can also cause a loss of power due to lost turbo-boost.

You really need to have a fiddle with the throttle controller to determine whether the problem as you see it is a lack of throttle response or, indeed, a lack of performance in an outright sense. For the record, 11.1 litres per 100km is not, depending on how and where you drive, unusual for this vehicle.

Any time the engine revs up but the car doesn't go any faster, you're a fair chance to have an issue with either the automatic transmission or the clutch in a manual car.

If an automatic doesn't accelerate when you give it some throttle, our suspicions would be with either the torque converter, something inside the transmission itself or the unit is low on transmission fluid. If a manual car does the same thing, it's usually a poorly adjusted or worn out clutch that is slipping, allowing the engine to rev up, but not transfer that power to the wheels.

Your car would have come with a five-year/130,000km warranty, so if it hasn't exceeded that kilometre limit, it should still be under factory cover. So make sure LDV fixes it as per the warranty terms and conditions.

Assuming there's nothing wrong with the engine causing it to lose power under load, this sounds like a case of the conditions causing the engine to struggle. Soft sand has a lot of friction and this literally grabs the tyres, causing the engine to load up and revs to fall. It's like a big, invisible hand grabbing the wheel and stopping it from turning freely. As you apply more power to counter this, the engine revs up, the wheels spin and the vehicle sinks even further into the sand and the cycle starts over again. Some cars with sensitive throttles are more prone this.

Experienced sand drivers know that the solution to this is to make the vehicle 'float' over the sand, rather than bulldoze through it. The best way to do that is to lower your tyre pressures. This allows the tread to 'bag out' and produce a larger footprint. And a bigger tread surface means more chance of staying on top of the sand rather than buried in it. It sounds simple but it really does work. Think of it as the difference between standing on thin ice in a pair of flat shoes versus stilettos.

How much pressure should you drop. We'd go from the usual on-road tyre pressures to about 18psi as a first step and then 15psi if the conditions are still causing problems. In extreme cases, you can go right down to 12 or even 10psi provided you're careful and keep your speed down. Don't forget to re-inflate the tyres once you're back on the bitumen.

Beyond that, if the problem is engine related, then a scan at your dealership should throw up a code to guide the mechanic on what's wrong. The vehicle is under warranty, so don't be backward in coming forward.

Coolants are pretty specific these days, and straying from the exact one the car’s manufacturer specifies can be asking for trouble. But the fact that the temperature settles a little when you travel more slowly and shift to a lower gear suggests that the whole cooling system is getting towards the limit of its capacity when you’re towing a big load uphill.

Going slower and using a lower gear all takes stress off the engine and, therefore, its cooling system. By using a lower gear, you’re effectively making the engine turn over a little faster which means both the coolant pump and the cooling fan (if it’s a belt-driven one) will both turn a little faster. That’s good for cooling. A lower gear also means you can maintain your speed with a little less throttle which means less fuel going into the engine and therefore less heat generated.

In the meantime, you can check things like the tension of the fan-belt and make sure that the coolant system doesn’t have any air trapped in it which can lead to overheating. Check, too, the condition of the coolant hoses, that the electric fan is cutting in when it should, there’s no debris blocking the radiator and that the radiator cap is holding pressure.

There’s another old-school trick that might make a difference next time: When the temperature starts to rise on the gauge, turn the car’s heater on full blast. This will make things a little toasty in the cabin, but it also means the coolant is now also passing through the heater core which, fundamentally, is an extra radiator.

Problems with the electronics appear to be the biggest source of grief for LDV owners. Many complain that the vehicle’s on-board infotainment system appears to be fundamentally incompatible with Android phones and that the Bluetooth function generally just doesn’t work as it should. Many LDVs also seem to have developed the annoying habit of ratcheting their stereo’s volume to full every time the car is started. The blind-spot warning system seems prone to offering false alarms and the reverse camera has been widely panned for it’s low-resolution image. About the only way to fix these issues is to replace the factory system with an aftermarket head unit…not what you’d expect from a modern vehicle.

Of course, given that the LDV T60 was launched in late 2017 with a five-year warranty, the oldest of them can now only be coming up for their fourth birthday. Which means that provided the vehicle has been serviced correctly and you haven’t driven it more than 130,000km, you’re covered by that warranty. Which seems to us, that it’s LDV’s problem to sort something out by either fixing the standard infotainment system or sourcing and fitting an aftermarket one that actually works. Contact LDV’s Australian customer service department and make sure your complaint is logged on the factory system.

Problems with the electronics appear to be the biggest source of grief for LDV owners. Many complain that the vehicle's on-board infotainment system appears to be fundamentally incompatible with Android phones and that the Bluetooth function generally just doesn't work as it should. Many LDVs also seem to have developed the annoying habit of ratcheting their stereo's volume to full every time the car is started. The blind-spot warning system seems prone to offering false alarms and the reverse camera has been widely panned for it's low-resolution image. About the only way to fix these issues is to replace the factory system with an aftermarket head unit…not what you'd expect from a modern vehicle.

Of course, given that the LDV T60 was launched in late 2017 with a five-year warranty, the oldest of them can now only be coming up for their fourth birthday. Which means that provided the vehicle has been serviced correctly and you haven't driven it more than 130,000km, you're covered by that warranty. Which seems to us, that it's LDV's problem to sort something out by either fixing the standard infotainment system or sourcing and fitting an aftermarket one that actually works. Contact LDV's Australian customer service department and make sure your complaint is logged on the factory system.

For reasons known only to marketing departments, the LDV, like most modern four-wheel-drive vehicles, uses a rotary knob to shift between two and four-wheel-drive and high and low-range. While old-school off-roaders of decades ago used a simple, mechanical lever to make these shifts, the modern rotary knob system relies on electronics and solenoids to effect the same shifts. When these solenoids go wrong or there’s an interruption to or glitch in the power supply, you can easily experience the symptoms you’ve noted.

The LDV is by no means the only brand to suffer vague or phantom shifting with this system and a body-computer re-set may be required. The fault has nothing to do with you leaving it in 4H while it was parked for a few days. It’s also very unlikely to be an actual mechanical problem with the transmission. So make it the dealer’s problem; it’s a new vehicle, so the vehicle will be covered by warranty and it won’t cost you anything to have put right.

It seems like the fix here would be an obvious one, but there’s a number of potential causes for a fault like this. Let’s start with the actual starter button. It could have failed internally. Or the starter motor itself might have either failed or simply had a critical wire fall off its terminal. Perhaps the immobiliser system is not arming the ignition as it should.

And here’s one from left field: Is the transmission in Park? If it is and the engine still won’t turn over, try putting the selector into Neutral. Both Park and Neutral should allow the engine to start, but most people only ever try it in Park. You could also have a poor earth or iffy battery terminal which is allowing enough current to pass to illuminate the dashboard lights, but not enough to actually crank the engine over.