Ask The Guide

The sound of air hissing on a turbocharged engine is often down to a leak in the intake trunking that takes air from the turbocharger, through the intercooler and into the engine. As this air is under pressure (from the turbo) you’re likely to hear it above the rest of the engine noise. If it’s only a small leak, you might not notice the fall-off in performance (or boost as you’ve described it) but it will only get worse as the damaged part of the trunking deteriorates further. Eventually, you’ll start to feel the leak’s effect as it allows more and more air to escape rather than being forced into the engine.

Checking the boost pressure with an accurate gauge will tell you if any boost is going AWOL, as can an electronic scan which might throw up a low-boost fault-code. But if you can hear the noise and have found the leak, replacing that section of plumbing is the logical first step. If that makes the noise go away, you’ve solved the issue.

Sometimes the leak is down to a split in the trunking, other times it can be as simple as a clamp that has been loosened by the constant pressurisation of the system every time the turbo boosts up. But it needs to be fixed as it can throw the air-fuel mixture way off target and lead to internal engine damage. If you can’t find the leak but suspect that there is one, a specialist workshop can perform what’s called an EVAP smoke test where the intake tract is filled with smoke. At the point where the (visible) smoke escapes, there’s your leak.

If there was a problem with the car that was logged with Renault while the vehicle was still covered by the factory warranty, then conventional wisdom says it’s Renault’s problem to put right. That’s what’s called a pre-existing fault and even though the car may now be out of warranty, if the problem was there before the warranty ran out, it’s still a warranty claim.

However, what would help your case no end would be independent proof that the problems you experienced in warranty were the same ones that ultimately caused the entire transmission to fail. Perhaps having the transmission inspected by a specialist would give you this information.

The issue will be that this transmission, in many cases, exhibited jerky performance even when it was brand-new. It’s likely Renault would point to this and tell you “they all do that,” suggesting that what you complained about back in warranty days was nothing to do with the failure. But you never know, Renault may wish to admit that this gearbox has known faults and flaws and look after you on the basis of customer care. Certainly, there are plenty of other Renault owners out there with similar stories to tell. Clutch-packs and the dual-mass flywheel have all been found to be wanting in this transmission.

There’s a strong trend within car-makers to ditch conventional park-brakes in favour of the one-button, electronic version. Along with the conventional manual transmission, it seems the park-brake lever is doomed to extinction. But that’s kind of the point, really; without a manual transmission, there’s no need for a hill-start using the conventional park-brake, as it’s only manual cars where this has ever been a real requirement.

While the best electronic park-brakes apply and disengage themselves automatically (if you forget) not everybody is a fan of them on the basis that they’re slower to operate and sometimes don’t operate logically or ergonomically. So why do car-makers use them? Partly because they’re seen by many consumers as an advance. For some car buyers, any time you replace a mechanical system with an electronic one, that’s progress. The electronic brake also allows for an automatic hill-hold function and, in a manual car, the brake will automatically release as the clutch pedal is released, preventing the car from rolling back until the clutch is biting.

Meantime, it’s hard to imagine that an electronic park-brake with its actuating motor(s) is any lighter than a conventional cable-operated brake, nor can the electronic version claim simplicity compared with a cable brake. The other argument is that the e-brake (as it’s become known) frees up space in the cabin. Perhaps.

Meantime, given that as many as 80 per cent of cars have switched to an electronic park-brake, and about 90 per cent of new cars are automatics, finding one with a conventional brake and a manual transmission mightn’t be an easy task.

There are two issues here. The first is that you’re paying a lease on a vehicle that isn’t functioning right now. There’s not much that anybody can do about that and it’s not really anybody’s fault. The disaster that is current global supply chains has meant that freight out of the United States is either moving at snail’s pace or not moving at all. Many Australians are waiting for bits and pieces from North America, all of which seem to be stranded on the dock in the US. Perhaps you could talk to your finance company about some interest-rate relief, but based on past experience, I wouldn’t be holding my breath there. And since it’s not Jeep’s fault that global trade is in such a state right now, I don’t think you’d do much good there, either. Nor is this a Jeep-specific problem; many car brands are having trouble sourcing repair and service parts.

As for the vehicle being replaced, on the face of it, I doubt that you have much of a case. If Jeep refuses to or cannot repair the vehicle, then you’d have grounds for a refund or replacement, but if Jeep believes that replacing the engine will fix the problem, then consumer law allows for that to happen.

The chances of the same vehicle having two engine failures seems pretty slim, so I wouldn’t be worried about it happening again. Don’t forget that there are any number of reasons (fuel pump, sensor, electrical problem, fuse, relay and a thousand more) for an engine to stop virtually in its tracks. Again, this is not a Jeep thing; all car-makers have experienced engines that for whatever reason have simple spluttered to a stop, often at speed on the highway.

When that happens, of course, you can lose the assistance to the power-steering and the braking system which is what your wife is concerned about. But it’s probably worth explaining that even though she would have to wrench the steering wheel with lots of muscle and really stomp on the brake pedal, even if the engine stops, she would still have brakes and steering. They just won’t be power-assisted. And even if she doesn’t think she’d be able to turn the wheel if that happened, adrenalin is a very powerful force on its own in such situations. And, again, the same thing could happen in any make or model of car.

Your mechanic is switched on, and is right about some Rangers (both 2.2 and 3.2-litre variants) experiencing oil pump failures. It seems the variable displacement, vane-style pumps aren’t lasting as long as some owners are expecting them to, and there’s actually an aftermarket pump that reverts to the gear-style mechanism that some Ranger owners are retro-fitting. I’m not sure that it's at the stage where you’d call the fault commonplace, but it is not unknown. And, of course, if the pump does fail, you’ve only got a few seconds to switch the engine off before major internal damage ensues.

The bigger complaint among Ranger owners is that the standard vane-style pump allows only a ten-minute window in which to drain the oil out during a service and get the new oil in. If the mechanic takes longer than those ten minutes, the oil will drain out of the pump and, because of the design, the pump won’t self-prime when the engine is restarted, leading to it running without oil pressure. Again, that’s enough to cause terminal engine damage.

The short answer is no. The Palisade in either petrol or turbo-diesel form is rated to tow a maximum of 2200kg. Towing a heavier load than that would be illegal, void your warranty and insurance and would simply be outright dangerous.

Beyond the towing element, the Palisade would be a great choice for a growing family of teenagers as it’s huge inside, comfortable and has a flexible seating layout. However, if you really want to tow a 3.5-tonne camper (which is what a family of that size probably needs for a vanning holiday) then you’re better off going for a four-wheel-drive wagon like a Nissan Patrol or Toyota LandCruiser.

These vehicles offer seven seats (unlike a dual-cab ute) and have the towing capacity to do what you need them to. That said, at 3500kg, you’re right on the limit of their legal towing capacity, so you’d need to accurately know the mass of the caravan or camper and then add the weight of any gear inside it including drinking water and luggage. All those things add to the towed mass and can easily take and already heavy camper-trailer beyond the legal towing limit of the vehicle.

There’s a school of thought out there that says you shouldn’t tow anything heavy in an overdrive gear (such as fifth gear in your Ranger). That’s because the extra load of the trailer places huge stresses on the transmission via the gearing of that overdriven gear.

In the real world, the best advice is to avoid going uphill or into a headwind in overdrive, saving that fifth gear for downhill or flat running where you’re not loading the gearbox too much. You also need to be travelling at a speed where the vehicle is comfortable in fifth, not lugging along at low revs. This applies also to a four-speed automatic with an overdriven fourth gear, not just manual transmissions. Use the overdrive lock-out button to force the transmission back to third gear where it will be happier and less likely to be damaged. Be aware, too, that modern transmissions with six (or more gears) often have both fifth and sixth gear overdriven, not just the top ratio.

Your problem could well be torque converter-related, but it could also be something else inside the transmission. The fact that the transmission will not shift back out of sixth gear even going uphill, suggests that there’s – in theory least – a problem with the electronics or hydraulics that control the shifting patterns. That the transmission is also shuddering is either a symptom caused by the same problem, or a result of a second fault in the unit.

It always raises suspicions when a problem crops up just after a vehicle has been serviced, and sometimes that suspicion is well placed. Have you double-checked the level of fluid in the transmission since it was flushed and refilled? Incorrect fluid levels can cause the sorts of problems you’re seeing. So can the incorrect grade of type of fluid used. You should check both these things first and move on from there if they check out okay.

This sounds like an odd question, but it’s actually not. Not all cars over the years have been fitted with two reversing lights and having just one was legally acceptable. From memory some Excels (and the early Toyota Prius in some markets and plenty of European cars) were sold here with both a single reversing light and a high-intensity fog-light set into the rear bumper. Australian drivers being unfamiliar with rear fog-lights, often left them turned on all the time, dazzling anybody following.

As well as reducing the cost-per-car, having a fog light and a reversing light that were interchangeable made building cars in both left and right-hand-drive form a little simpler (and cheaper) as the same bumper moulding could be used with the lights simply swapped side-to-side.

In any case, by 2009, the Hyundai Excel had grown a second reversing light to bring it into line with other mainstream cars being sold here. Hyundai Australia managed to dig me up a wiring diagram for the FD model Excel (2007 to 2011) which clearly shows the wiring loom to support two reversing lights.

If the vast majority of your driving is done at open-road speeds over long distances, the arguments for a hybrid car of any sort begin to lose traction. The plug-in hybrid will - once you’ve charged it overnight - give you the first few dozen kilometres of driving on electric power (though possibly not that many at highway speeds) while a range-extender electric vehicle will end up having its petrol engine running for most of the time oncer you’ve exhausted the batteries.

Which is another way of saying, you might be better off with a conventional petrol or diesel car and not hauling around an electric motor and battery-packs that won’t be doing you any good for much of the time.

Hybrids work best in an urban, stop-start environment where the electric motor can accelerate the car from rest efficiently, as well as recoup braking energy to return to the batteries. But a long drive down a country road doesn’t always allow for much of that. There’s not much point paying for technology that doesn’t offer a benefit in your specific circumstances.