Ask The Guide

Ford used the same body on its Focus from 2011 until the model was replaced in 2018. On that basis, the front door from either of the cars you’ve listed should fit your car perfectly. You don’t even need to worry about finding a door from a sedan or hatch as opposed to a two-door Focus, as Ford didn’t offer that model in Australia in a two or three-door (which would have had longer doors). Even the sportiest Focus, the ST, was a five-door hatchback. Ford did give the Focus a mild facelift in 2015, but the styling changes were restricted to the front and rear, with the doors not altering at all.

Finding a second-hand door shouldn’t present too many problems the Focus sold in reasonable numbers and many ended up in recycling yards. You might even strike it really lucky and find the door in the same colour as your car which might negate the need to have it painted.

Products such as paint coatings and upholstery treatments are often not much more than a way for the car dealership to squeeze a few (sometimes quite a few) more dollars out of you. Don’t tell me, let me guess: Once you’d agreed on the car, colour, options and price, you were led to another office where a sales rep offered you these miracle products that would keep your car looking new forever and without which, it would be a shambles in just months. Am I close?

I’m not saying that some of the better products don’t work, and they certainly shouldn’t harm your car’s appearance, but ask yourself this: If a car maker cannot, in 2021, sell you a car that has high quality, long-lasting exterior paint, do you really want that car in the first place? If something as fundamental as the paint is questionable, what else is going to go wrong with the thing? And if the paint does somehow degrade through normal day-to-day exposure, the new-car warranty should cover it anyway. There could be exceptional cases (such as using the car underground in a mine, or parking it next to a railway line every day of its life where it will be constantly showered with small, rusty metallic particles) but for a normal car living a normal life, these dealership add-ons are a very dubious prospect.

The gearshift in your Cruze is operated by a cable. When it’s working properly, one end of the cable attaches to the gear-lever in the cabin and the other end attaches to the selectors on the transmission that physically select Drive, Reverse or Park. If the gear-lever is moving but the selectors aren’t, there’s usually one of three possibilities. Either the cable has fallen off at the gear-lever, it’s fallen off at the gearbox end or, the cable has snapped or broken.

A common cause of this fault is failure of what’s known as the clock-spring which lives inside the steering column. But it’s not a spring at all, it’s actually the electrical connector that joins the air-bag (and steering wheel controls if your car has them) to the rest of the car’s electrical systems. It’s called a clock-spring because it’s wound in a spiral shape to allow the steering wheel to turn from lock to lock without the connecting wiring binding or bunching up. Eventually, fatigue gets the better of a clock-spring and it snaps, allowing the connection to fail. And that’s very probably what’s causing the air-bag light on your dashboard.

But don’t ignore it, as the clock-spring is also responsible for sending the correct signal to the air-bag in the case of a crash where the bag needs to deploy. And driving with an air-bag that may not go off when it should is a terrible idea.

Hyundai’s Theta 2 family of engines does, indeed, have a pretty chequered track record for reliability. But it’s important to note that the majority of vehicles affected have been US-market cars with engines built in a different factory to the cars supplied to Hyundai Australia. For the record, the North American cars in question experienced debris from the engine machining process blocking the oil passages inside the engine, leading to bearing failure. In some cases, the engine failure resulted in a roadside fire.

Even though our iX35s were built in South Korea rather than North America, there’s still a chance the same problem could crop up here given that engineering materials and techniques tend to be standardised across all factories in the name of efficiency.

As you point out, your car is now out of warranty, but I wouldn’t leave it at that. I’d be talking to Hyundai’s customer service department with a view to at least getting some assistance in having the car fixed if, indeed, it was a manufacturing fault that caused the engine failure. I’d also be pointing out that 80,000km is not a realistic life expectancy for a modern engine. To get anywhere with this approach, you’ll need to be able to show that the car has been serviced by the book and (probably) that the failure was due to a loss of oil pressure that led to bearing failure.

Like a lot of relatively modern engine designs, the Cruze uses a spark plug centrally located in the cylinder head. That means that it’s between the two camshafts in the Holden’s case, and that means the spark plug lead needs to effectively pass through the rocker cover to attach to the spark plug. In turn, that means that the spark plug sits at the bottom of a tube that forms an oil-tight chamber between the inside of the tube (where the plug lives) and the inside of the rocker cover (which has oil flinging around inside of it when the engine is running).

The problems start when the seal at the bottom of that tube fails and allows oil to seep into the tube from the rocker cover. That’s when you’ll see the oil you described. The fix is to remove the rocker cover and replace either the whole gasket, or the O-ring seal (depending on the design). If it’s the latter, don’t just replace the one that’s leaking now, replace all of them as the rest won’t be far behind the one that’s already leaking. O-rings and gasket start to become hard and brittle as they age, and that’s when leaks will occur. This is not a huge job to fix, but left unchecked, it can allow the engine to begin to misfire.

The rumours of a V6 engine option for the next Ford Everest have been swirling around for a little while now. The other expected change is the phasing out of the five-cylinder turbo-diesel, leaving the Everest (and Ranger) line-up with a four-cylinder or V6 turbo-diesel. It’s also pretty likely that you’d need to spend up big for the flagship model of the Everest to get the option of the V6. A petrol V6, meanwhile, is a possibility but would likely be packaged up with a plug-in hybrid driveline. That means that each variant (if it pans out that way) will be aimed at a very specific type of buyer, so it won’t be as simple as petrol versus diesel V6.

The rule of thumb in 2021 is all about deciding whether a diesel engine is right for you. That rule states that if all your driving is around an urban environment without regular (at least a couple of times a month) highway running at highway speeds, a modern turbo-diesel can be a bit of a maintenance headache. As far as any of these vehicles go as an investment, it’s probably a mistake to imagine they won’t – as most brand-new cars do – drop a sizeable chunk of their value the moment you leave the dealership for the first time.

The NSW Office of Fair Trading has a Disciplinary Action Unit (DAU) which, on the surface, appears to be able to sanction companies or enforce findings by the department. Which leaves me wondering how Kia has managed to brush off that authority by refusing the refund recommended by the department. Perhaps you would be wise to contact the ACCC (the old Consumer Affairs Department) as this organisation has some real teeth.

The question, however, is whether you’ve given Kia sufficient opportunity to fix the problem. Form what you’ve said, that’s probably the case, but all disputes of this nature rely on the car-maker being given every chance to make things right. That said, your frustration is understandable and, even if the problem is eventually rectified, your opinion of the vehicle will probably be permanently coloured.

For the record, plenty of other owners of the Kia Stinger have complained about exactly the same problem, so it appears that it’s a real concern and not one of which Kia could possibly be unaware. I’ve heard of some owners having the sunroof frame replaced and that fixing the problem. So perhaps there’s a tolerance problem in the manufacturing of the sunroof frames. The point there being that replacing the original frame with another one that is out of spec will simply reproduce the same problem. Perhaps that’s what’s happening to your car.

Let’s start with what made a 2017 Holden Commodore an SV6. Over and above the standard Commodore specification, ordering an SV6 also got you the higher-spec V6 engine with 210kW, 18-inch alloy wheels, FE2 (firmer) suspension, LED daytime running lights, a leather-wrapped steering wheel and a body kit.

The Black Edition package, meanwhile, was a visual enhancement package that could be specified with either a Commodore SV6 or SS (the V8 model) and, in the case of the SV6, added specific black alloy wheels (still 18 inches) a blacked-out grille, black rear lip spoiler, Black Edition badging, satellite navigation, an improved info-screen, red stitching on the seats and specific floor mats.

There’s a distinct line in the sand here. If the 2005 Ford Focus you’re referring to was a late Mark 1 Focus, then yes, the headlights should interchange with an earlier Focus as both cars were more or less the same. At the time, Ford was making use of what was called its `Edge’ styling philosophy which was all hard lines and sharp angles.

However, for the Mark 2 Focus which came along in May 2005, Ford had softened the styling considerably, and the headlights of an early Focus will definitely not fit the Mark 2 model as they are a totally different shape.

What puzzles me most is where you managed to obtain a 2000 Focus as the car was not introduced into Australia by Ford until late 2002. The car did exist prior to that, but not in this country. Perhaps you’re buying headlights online from an overseas seller. If that’s the case, make sure they’re for a right-hand-drive Focus as they’ll physically point the wrong way if they’re for a left-hand-drive car. They’ll also be technically unroadworthy if that’s the case.