Ask The Guide

Technically, the Captiva operates in all-wheel-drive all the time. But there’s a centre differential that apportions the drive between the front and rear axles to allow individual wheels to rotate at different speeds. If that centre coupling isn’t working properly it could cause the noise you’re hearing, possibly from the tyres that are skidding or skipping as they turn, or mechanical noises caused by what’s known as 'axle wind up'.

The Captiva normally operates much as a front-wheel drive vehicle and only engages the rear axle when the computer detects any wheel slip or loss of traction.

That’s a great question and suggests you shouldn’t take no for an answer in this case. Plenty of modern cars use a bit of oil (actually, all engines use some oil) thanks to the low-tension piston rings fitted to improve fuel economy. Swings and roundabouts. But 600ml of oil in 1000km is not something you can ignore.

Had the car always used this much oil, there’s a chance that this is 'normal' oil consumption. But the fact that the consumption has suddenly jumped up to the point where the engine ran out of oil makes me think that there might be a problem. Some oil consumption is normal, but it’s when the engine’s drinking habits change that you can have the beginning of a problem.

The fact Kia has admitted some engines had been fitted with poor quality piston rings, would make me think your car is one of the affected ones and should be fixed at Kia’s cost. I’d be curious to know what inspection the dealership conducted to assess your engine. One possibility would be to have the engine independently tested and assessed in terms of its cylinder compression and what’s called a leak-down test. This will give a much better idea of the condition of the engine’s internals and what’s needed.

Subaru’s own brochure blurb for the Crosstrek features the promise of off-roading family fun. With that in mind, the warranty will still apply even if you do get adventurous with the vehicle. That said, you might have warranty problems if it’s deemed that you’ve abused the vehicle by trying to take it places it was never designed to go. For example, while the Crosstrek is fine for finding a great mountain bike trail somewhere along a forestry road, trying to drive it up the Old Telegraph Track to Cape York through metre-deep river crossings is not within the Crosstrek’s design brief. Doubtless Subaru might argue you should have bought a high-clearance off-roader with a snorkel for such adventures.

The CVT is Subaru’s own work and design. While many other carmakers buy in transmissions from outside manufacturers, the CVT in the Crosstrek is an in-house effort. It’s generally agreed that Subaru’s CVTs are better than some other brands in terms of durability and reliability.

You could be looking at anything from a maladjusted or broken selector, to a transmission with low fluid level or even a transmission that has pretty much failed internally. All three possibilities can see a car with reverse and no other gears.

A transmission specialist is your first port of call, once you’ve checked the transmission fluid level yourself, of course. The owner’s manual will tell you how to do this.

It sounds like the fact that Haval’s warranty on this car of seven years/150,000km as a commercial vehicle (as opposed to unlimited kilometres for a privately operated vehicle) was not fully explained to you when you bought the car. Either that or you didn’t advise the dealer of your intentions for use of it.

However, I wouldn’t be too worried about the car falling to bits at the 150,000km mark. Modern cars (even cheaper ones) are pretty robust things these days, and provided they’re serviced properly, I don’t think 250,000km is too much to ask. That said, your car is a hybrid, so the life of the EV battery is probably the biggest question mark, and not something we can speculate on with any accuracy as the Havals using this tech aren’t old enough to have started failing yet.

The best bet is to be fastidious with your servicing and keep a close eye on the car’s habits and performance including its fuel economy. Because you’re driving the car a lot, you should be pretty well tuned in to the normal noises it makes and the way it feels to drive. Any change in this is when you need to start looking deeper.

Proton used to use engines it built under license from other manufacturers (notably Mitsubishi). In those days, there was a decent chance that a Proton rocker cover would have been interchangeable from another make or model that also used the same or similar Mitsubishi-designed engine.

Eventually, though, Proton progressed to the point where it was building and fitting engines of its own design, and the one in your Preve is that first of those. As such, you probably wouldn’t be able to switch it for another make and model’s cover, although you might find that other Proton models from the same era as your car (and which used the same engine) will, in fact, have rocker covers that can be mixed and matched. But be very careful, as even a different location for the EGR valve or breather tube might be the difference that renders the two covers non-interchangeable.

It depends on which particular version of the G10 you have. That’s because, around this time, LDV offered three different engines in vehicles badged as G10s. There were a pair of petrol engines – one turbocharged and one without a turbo – and a turbo-diesel. Both the turbocharged petrol and the turbo-diesel used a timing chain, while the non-turbo petrol (which had a capacity of 2.4 litres) used a rubber timing belt.

As such, the two engines with timing chains should not need maintenance in this area, while the 2.4 petrol’s timing belt will need to be replaced at whatever intervals LDV specified. Workshops dealing with these cars seem to recommend a belt-change interval of five years or 100,000km, whichever comes first.

We have seen this problem before in at least one other ZB Commodore, so you’re definitely not on your own. The problem is very possibly caused by a misalignment of the micro-switch that detects the car is, indeed, in Park, and allows it to be powered down. If the computer can’t see the correct signal from this micro-switch or sensor, it assumes the car is not ready to be locked and left.

Given that yours is not the only example of this, perhaps your auto electrician has seen this before and will know what the fix is. Even if they’re not familiar with the problem, a good auto sparky should be able to sort this. If not, a transmission specialist would be your next port of call.

The first thing to check here is what’s called the clock spring. This is an electrical connector inside the steering wheel that allows the wheel to be turned to full lock and back while still allowing for electrical contact between the airbag and the rest of the car.

If this spring fails, the connection between the airbag and the systems that would trigger it in a crash are lost. Which means that in a big enough collision, the airbag would not fire and protect the driver.

Clock spring replacement is relatively simple but it’s still a job best left to the pros, as any time you’re messing with an airbag, you’re playing with a fairly violent explosive component. Get it wrong and accidentally fire the airbag, and you could be seriously injured.

I’ll presume you mean the indicator stalk which uses a soft touch to indicate a lane change, and a firmer push to keep the indicators on until a turn has been made. There’s also some confusion when trying to cancel the indicators manually, and inadvertently indicating the wrong way. Plenty of people have complained about this, and some owners don’t seem to ever get used to it. That said, drivers of other models rarely find this setup to be a problem.

I checked with GWM who told me that there were no plans to make any changes to the indicator system on the current model Tank 300. The vehicle passes all safety standards for Australia and there’s no problem with the system that would require a safety recall or any other intervention. However, this feedback has reached GWM and – though nobody at GWM has said so – I wouldn’t be surprised if the next incarnation of the Tank 300 has a different indicator stalk system.