LDV T60 Engine Problems

The coolant reservoir tank on your intercooler system works as an expansion tank, so it will have a high and low mark somewhere on it so you can keep the coolant at the correct level. It should be between the high and low marks when the engine is cold. Too high and coolant will be lost when the intercooler gets hot; too low and you won’t have enough coolant for the intercooler to work efficiently.

Modern engines are pretty coolant-specific these days, so you need to check your owner’s manual to see precisely what coolant is specified for the intercooler. It may be different to the one for the radiator because of the materials the intercooler is made from. That said, in the case of the LDV, I believe the correct coolant for the intercooler is the standard green type and is also used in the car’s engine cooling system.

On the face of it, there’s a lot wrong with the way you’re being treated here. For a start, if the car has already had the software upgrade for the accelerator calibration and it’s still playing up, I’d suggest there’s still something wrong with the throttle-by-wire system in place. So it needs to be looked at. Your car was sold new with a five-year/130,000km warranty, so this is really LDV’s problem to fix provided you’ve had the car serviced correctly and haven’t exceeded that mileage.

As such, the dealership should not be in a position to charge you an hourly rate to fix a warranty issue. As for the old 'they all do that’ nonsense, that’s an example of a dealership treating its customers like idiots. Cars do not die when you take off, regardless of how hard you accelerate, and to suggest that they do is an insult to your intelligence.

So give this dealer the flick and either try another one or – better yet – go straight to the top and contact LDV Australia’s customer service division. Australian Consumer Law is pretty unambiguous on this stuff.

This is very likely to be an electronic problem based on the fact that if the transmission works properly in manual mode, there’s nothing internally wrong with it. But when you shift it back to automatic mode, there’s a stray or incorrect signal being sent to the on-board computer. In turn, that’s possibly throwing the operation into limp-home mode which is why you suddenly have a loss of power.

Limp-home mode is, as the name suggests, designed to get you home without doing further damage to the vehicle. As such, it can limit power, limit top speed and even lock you out of certain gears to ensure this happens. Have the vehicle scanned to see if any error codes are being thrown up by the computer.

It would appear the vehicle has gone into limp-home mode. This limits how much power the engine produces and how fast the vehicle will go as a means of protecting the engine and transmission from damage due to whatever the root cause is. Often a low coolant or oil level or high temperature will force the car into limp-home mode, but there are many other reasons for this to happen. You need to take the car to a workshop which will be able to scan the vehicle electronically and gain a better idea of what’s going on.

Don’t forget, either, that provided you car is less than five years old and has travelled less than 130,000km, it should still be covered by the LDV factory warranty.

As for the colour of the oil, diesel engines are notoriously filthy things and nearly always turn their oil black in a very short space of time. In fact, even when topping up with new oil, by the time it has reached the sump and appears on the dipstick, it’s already black.

If the oil is escaping the transfer case on your car, it has to be going somewhere. So, yes, you would expect to see some evidence of the leak where you park the car each night. The thing is the oil may not be directly under the transfer case, as it may have leaked onto a chassis rail or even a cable or brake line and be dripping on to the ground some distance from the case. That said, it might also be right under the transfer case as a big clue to what’s going on.

The costs of fixing the leak would depend on where it’s coming from and how much disassembly is required to get to it. But in reality, leaks like this are covered by your factory warranty, so really, it’s LDV’s problem, not yours.

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.

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.

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.