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The reason for deleting a temperature gauge is the same as for any other time a manufacturer deletes equipment; to save money. While your Crafter doesn’t have a temperature gauge per se, it will have a warning light that will illuminate if the temperature starts to rise above normal. At which point, the onus is on you to stop and find the problem, or risk blowing the engine up. The problem with these light is that the damage is sometimes already done by the time the light flickers on, while an actual gauge might have given you more warning that there was a problem.
Car makers get away with this sort of thing these days because cooling systems are quite reliable and don’t tend to give problems. Which is absolutely no comfort to anybody who has had a catastrophic engine melt-down.
Fitting an aftermarket temperature gauge in the old days was simple because there was no computer control of the car and its driveline. You simply found a convenient, threaded spot in the cylinder head or block and screwed a temperature gauge sender into it, mounted the gauge in the cabin where you could see it easily and job done. That doesn’t apply nowadays as to mount the sender, you’d probably need to disconnect some other intrinsic sensor that the computer relies on to make the car work properly.
But there is a modern solution. You can now buy a virtual gauge cluster that plugs into the on-board diagnostics port on modern cars. From that data, the cluster can determine all sorts of things (including engine temperature) and display that info on a small screen you mount in the cabin. You’ll also be able to display a heap of other information, including transmission temperature, air-fuel ratio and plenty more.
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The last decade of dual-cab four-wheel-drive utes have emerged as the tow-vehicles of choice, and you see them everywhere filling roles exactly like the one you have planned. Popular models include the Ford Ranger you’ve nominated, Toyota HiLux, Mazda BT-50, VW Amarok, Mitsubishi Triton, Nissan Navara and Isuzu D-Max. But there are also cheaper alternatives including makes like the South-Korean made Ssangyong and various Chinese brands like LDV and Great Wall.
Just make sure you know exactly how much you need to tow before making a decision as some of the cheaper models don’t have the same outright towing capacity and even if they do, some of them don’t have the engine performance to make towing as easy as it should be. For parts availability, the Toyota would be king in really remote areas, but any of the major brands are pretty well covered in Australia.
Meantime, don’t rule out ute-based wagons such as the Ford Everest, Isuzu MU-X, Mitsubishi Pajero Sport and Toyota Fortuna. These offer better ride comfort when unladen thanks to more sophisticated rear suspensions and most have as much or almost as much towing capacity as their ute brethren.
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It sounds like you’re chasing a problem that is a bit elusive. If your initial suspicions were that the centre bearing was worn, what makes you think the rear universal joint is now the problem? You could spend a lot of time and money replacing things that, ultimately, don’t fix the problem.
The best advice is to take the car to a transmission specialist who will be able to diagnose what’s really going on and replace or repair those things. Even if the universal joint is worn out, replacing it can be a bit tricky as you have to maintain the driveshaft’s original alignment to avoid introducing new imbalance dramas into the equation. It’s not, therefore, as straight-forward as it looks on paper.
But don’t rule out a damaged, bent or unbalanced driveshaft as this can also cause the sort of symptoms that a worn universal joint can contribute.
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