Ask The Guide

If you’re selling the car as an unregistered vehicle, you’d need to hand the number-plates in to Vicroads and cancel the registration. From there, the car’s roadworthiness is the responsibility of whoever buys it and attempts to register it.

The buyer will be required to fix whatever is wrong with the car (including the issues that got it defected) before it could be returned to the road legally, and that goes for any state or territory. An unregistered vehicle permit requires a declaration that the vehicle is safe to be driven, so that would rule out driving it before the issues have been fixed, too.

Presumably, you’re talking about a car that is having trouble getting moving from standstill while facing up a hill. This is the result of a lack of power but that lack could be down to a thousand things. You could be looking at an engine with a poor tune or even a transmission with a faulty torque converter that is not allowing the engine to rev up for take-off.

A lot of local cars of a similar age to yours also experience fuel pick-up problems. We’ve seen cases where a split fuel line inside the tank refuses to pick up fuel if the tank is about half full and parked on a hill. So try this experiment: Turn the car around 180 degrees and see if it’s just as reluctant to take off up the same hill in reverse. If the direction the car is facing is the key factor, you’re probably looking at a fuel pick-up issue.

It rather depends on the car in question, Lee. If the car is designed to run on high-octane ULP (95 RON or higher) then you risk damage by feeding it any other grade of fuel. If you wanted to be completely sure that no harm would come to your 98-RON burning engine, then draining the tank and refilling it with the appropriate fuel is the way to go.

In the real world, however, another vastly less messy and expensive option would be to fill the other half of the tank with the highest octane fuel you can find (preferably 98-RON) and then driving conservatively, avoiding high engine speeds or full-bore acceleration until you fill up completely with the right fuel next time. A modern car can often `sense’ what octane fuel is in it, and will adapt the engine to run on it without doing any damage. Some engines are designed to work most efficiently and make more power on a higher-octane fuel, but can cope with less octane if need be.

If your car is designed to run on 95 RON, but you’ve half filled it with 91 RON, filling the rest of the tank with 98 RON should just about take the overall octane rating back to where it needs to be. The required fuel octane should be listed on a sticker inside the filler flap or listed in the owner’s manual.

These units are well known for giving trouble including buttons not working right through to complete failure of the screen and unit. There are, however, companies that specialise in repairing these units and can replace the problem components to bring the unit back to life.

But even if you go with a second-hand unit from a wrecking yard, it should have been tested to ensure it’s working properly before it’s shipped to you. And if it doesn’t work, a reputable parts recycler will offer to replace it.

The problem you face of course, is what happens when the world’s supply of second-hand Territory commands centres dries up. Again, it shouldn’t be a problem as there are aftermarket units designed specifically to fit the Territory’s dashboard that are better quality, deliver better sound and often include features your car may not have such as Bluetooth and mobile-phone mirroring.

While the CVT is enjoying a bit of a purple patch right now with many car-makers using it for its efficiency benefits, you’re not the only one, Gregg, that doesn’t want to own such a thing. The CVT’s history is littered with failures, although to be perfectly fair, they are a lot better now than they’ve ever been.

But even if you can accept their reliability track record, some owners will just never take to the CVT’s characteristics of allowing the engine to rev up and have the rest of the vehicle catch up. It can feel very alien and it’s hardly a sporty sensation, either.

With all that in mind, you probably should start looking at things like the two-wheel-drive versions of something like, say, the Toyota Kluger or Hyundai Santa Fe. Both are available in two-wheel-drive, both have conventional 8-speed automatic transmissions and both can haul a decent load (2000kg and 2500kg respectively). The Toyota even offers a hybrid driveline, but, sadly for buyers like you, that uses a CVT transmission.

Any time you have oil in the coolant (or vice-versa) you could be looking at an engine with a faulty cylinder-head gasket. Cross-contamination of the cooling and lubrication system suggests that the gasket has failed, allowing the two fluids to mix. Eventually, you’ll lose enough coolant (into the engine’s combustion chambers or oil system or both) to cause the engine to overheat. Or, you’ll have enough coolant find its way into the oil to dilute the oil and cause damage to the engine. Either way, it needs to be fixed and not allowed to deteriorate until the damage is irreversible.

Changing a head gasket is a fairly major job, particularly in modern engines with multiple overhead camshafts and all sorts of pollution controls fitted. But before you commit to this, there’s a workshop test called a TK Test that analyses the coolant for chemicals associated with the engine’s combustion process. If the test reveals these chemicals in the coolant, then you definitely have a gasket failure.

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.

The world is your oyster here, Myra, and there are literally hundreds of makes and models that will do what you want as well offer the five-star safety rating you’re looking for. Your priorities are spot on, too; safety and the driving characteristics (in this case, steering weight) are very important in how you relate to the car and enjoy driving it.

Since you’re not too concerned with what brand you buy, the best advice is to short-list a few cars that fall within your budget and then go and test drive each one, checking that it steers the way you like it. Even small hatchbacks nowadays have the safety and performance to take you pretty much anywhere the road goes. But for longer journeys, you might appreciate features such as cruise control and a full-sized spare tyre.

While the weight of a towball bike rack and a couple of bicycles won’t be the issue, the problem will probably be down to the potential for those bikes and rack to obscure the parking sensors or reversing camera, or even making the rear hatch impossible to open with the rack in place. In cars with reverse autonomous braking, the sensors and cameras that allow that function to exist could also be compromised. And suddenly, the car you think has reverse AEB, suddenly doesn’t.

Car-makers spend a lot of time and money making that sort of technology work, only to have an aftermarket bike-rack company come along and render it useless. Bull-bars on four-wheel-drives are another great example: Aftermarket protection bars don’t always take into account the operation of the vehicle’s air-bag systems, potentially making the car less safe in a crash.

To be honest, those do very much sound like the normal characteristics of a CVT transmission. The CVT saves fuel by allowing the engine to work in its most efficient speed range more of the time. That’s why, when you hit the accelerator, the engine sounds like it’s flaring. Which, of course, it is, to get into that sweet spot where it makes more power from less fuel. Essentially, the engine takes off and the rest of the car catches up with it.

The on-board computer can also interpret a burst of acceleration as the driver wanting to press on. That’s why the car will sometimes hold higher engine revs, because it wants to be ready for the next burst. When you back off, the computer interprets that as the need for speed having passed and it drops back to cruising revs…just as you’ve noted.

The jerkiness is another thing some owners notice, others never do. It’s all to do with the way the torque converter is calibrated. If you have any doubts, you could ask for the transmission to be scanned at the next service to see if it’s all in good condition.

Either way, you should report your concerns to Honda now so that if anything goes wrong down the track, the problem will be listed as a pre-existing condition and will still be considered by the factory warranty.