Ask The Guide

There is, indeed, an all-wheel-drive version of the current-model Ford Transit in some parts of the world, but sadly for those with a specific set of needs, it isn’t coming to Australia. Fundamentally, the sales volumes wouldn’t justify Ford’s investment in technical training and spare parts required to get the AWD Transit into showrooms here.

On the face of it, Australian buyers looking for an all-wheel-drive commercial vehicle are vastly more attracted to vehicles like Ford’s own Ranger dual-cab utility. And that shouldn’t really come as a surprise, either; local buyers have always been more drawn to conventional utilities than they have vans. That’s the complete reversal of how the European market sees things, but that’s cultural difference for you.

Meantime, I can see why some people would like an AWD Transit. For towing a tradie trailer while keeping your other gear safe and having the ability to get on and off greasy building sites, a van like a Transit with four-wheel-drive would take some beating. But for now, for Australia, it’s officially a no from Ford.

The upgrade to your navigation system can be done at a Volkswagen dealership and would be part of the work carried out at your next service (assuming you use a VW workshop). What most people tend to find, however, is that the Tiguan’s Apple CarPlay facility allows you to use the navigation services on your phone which, based on consumer feedback, are more accurate anyway since they’re updated in real time.

It sounds very much like a seized bush in the rubber-donut assembly that joins the tailshaft to the back of the gearbox. Inside the rubber donut (also called the flex-joint) there’s a metal inner bush and these have been known to seize. Water gets into this bush and rusts the assembly solid. If that happens, it will feel like the thing will never come apart.

At that point, perhaps removing the slip-yoke from the back of the transmission will allow you to remove the whole assembly and get better access to it on a bench, rather than from under the car. The slip-yoke shouldn’t present any problems other than you might lose a little transmission fluid (so have some rags handy) but you do need to remember to mark the position of all the components relative to each other. That means marking where the tailshaft bolts were relative to the rear coupling, the coupling relative to the flange, the shaft relative to the yoke’s holes and so on. That’s so when the tailshaft is reassembled and refitted, it’s still in balance and won’t create any new driveline vibrations. This process even extends to marking which nuts and bolts attached to which mounting holes in the rear CV joint, as some of these bolts were individually weighted for balance.

The other thing to check is the actual centre bearing you’re trying to replace. For some reason there were two different part numbers for this series of Ford Falcon. One has a different bearing inner diameter and a different spacing for the mounting holes compared with the other. Make sure you buy the correct one.

The engines in these Hondas are considered pretty solid and reliable performers. But as with any car now celebrating its 15^th birthday, things can go wrong that can affect performance. With that in mind it could be time to give the engine a comprehensive once-over and a full service. Having the car electronically interrogated would be a good idea, too, as any faults noted by the on-board computer will have been logged and could tell you a lot about that’s going on under the bonnet. Just because the car hasn’t illuminated a dashboard warning light, doesn’t mean that the computer hasn’t noticed something strange going on.

The problem is obviously an intermittent one (or the car would never run properly) and that really does point towards something electronic. That said, a good mechanic will also go back to first principles checking things like fuel delivery, ignition timing and even engine compression.

Any information you can gather when the problem occurs will help enormously, too. For instance, does the engine blow smoke or make any odd noises when it loses power? Does the car shudder or suddenly start using more fuel when the problem occurs? The more observations you can pass on to a mechanic the better idea he or she will have of where to start searching. Fundamentally, you could be looking at anything from a collapsed catalytic converter or muffler, a faulty fuel pump or injector, a damaged spark-plug lead or literally any one of about a thousand other things.

The short answer is that this can be done, and, in fact, there are kits available to allow you to add a leaf to a suspension spring-pack. The broad idea is to make the spring stiffer, increasing theoretical load-carrying ability as well as giving more ground clearance (as the modified spring will usually make the vehicle sit higher).

The trick is finding the correct extra-leaf kit for your specific vehicle, and this is where a specialist supplier comes in. The kit should include the extra two spring leaves as well as longer centre bolts (as the spring-pack is now thicker). And as with any suspension -related equipment, quality is hugely important to safety and the actual performance of the new set-up.

But there are other issues. The first is a legal one. While the new, thicker spring-pack might tempt you to increase the loads you carry, legally, the vehicle retains its original loading and towing limits until it has been certified otherwise by an accredited engineer. Some kits are supplied with this paperwork all sorted for you ready to simply lodge with the authorities, but some aren’t. And consulting engineers don’t generally come cheap. You would also need to inform your insurance provider of the change to the vehicle’s specification. There are also absolute limits to how much higher your vehicle can sit compared with a standard one. This varies from state to state, but in your home state of NSW at the moment, a vehicle can legally be raised by 75mm over its standard ride height. The catch is that only 50mm of this can be from suspension modifications, and the other 25mm of lift through bigger tyres. But if you stick within those limits and don’t intend to increase the vehicle’s load or towing ability, then the raised suspension doesn’t need to be certified by an engineer for the vehicle to remain legal.

Regardless of whether you use an additive, a car’s Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) will still need to be cleaned (or regenerated) periodically as soot builds up in it. Short trips where the engine doesn’t get a chance to warm up properly, as well as extended periods of idling in traffic and stop-start running will all hasten this requirement.

In the case of the Captiva diesel, the best way to manually force a regeneration is to put aside an hour and go for a decent drive. The advice from Holden in the day was to travel at more than 50km/h and at more than 2000rpm (which may mean locking the car out of overdrive) for a minimum of 25 minutes. During this process, you should not allow the speed or revs to fall below those two figures which suggests finding a decent strip of freeway to carry out this process. You should also not turn off the engine at any point in this procedure. The broad idea is to get the engine and exhaust hot enough for the filter to regenerate and clean itself.

If, after 100km of this type of treatment, the DPF light on the dashboard hasn’t disappeared, the solution is a trip to a workshop to have the filter investigated and, potentially, hand-cleaned. Experience suggests a couple of attempts may be needed to get this to happen as it should, and in fact, the car’s computer will give you several chances to produce the desired effect before the workshop beckons.

I’ve trawled lists of Suzuki warning lights and their meanings, but I can’t find one that approximates a red D in a rectangle. The closest I could get to was a warning that the rear fog-light was on (the lamp signal can look vaguely like a `D’) but to have an audible alarm as well is very strange.

An ABS fault-light usually (in a Suzuki) features the letter A, B and S, so I’m not sure how the dealership arrived at the conclusion that the ABS system was at fault. Have you had the car electronically scanned? That can often throw light on what’s going wrong, even on an intermittent basis.

The Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) of your vehicle is 2890kg. That is, the total mass of the vehicle and its payload (including passengers) must not exceed this figure. The Gross Combination Mass (GCM) is the absolute weight limit for the vehicle, it’s payload and whatever it’s towing.

These two vehicles share a lot of traits both in terms of their engineering and their target market. Both are aimed at the high-end of the mid-sized off-road station-wagon market and both do a pretty good job of offering lots of off-road ability along with the sort of luxury and convenience that many families want. In the case of design and engineering they are both based on utilities (the Mitsubishi Triton and Toyota HiLux respectively) and share the drivelines and front structure with those utes. To make them work as passenger rather than load-carrying vehicles, both the Pajero Sport and Fortuner do away with the utilities’ leaf-sprung rear axle and replace it a coil-sprung unit for greatly enhanced comfort.

Both vehicles have had their niggling reliability problems, mainly to do with DPF and some EGR problems, but overall, they’re both now old enough for the majority of the bugs to have been ironed out. Perhaps the biggest packaging difference is that the Pajero Sport is a good deal narrower across the cabin than the Toyota, and that matters for families with bigger kids. Both vehicles were facelifted late last year with new tech and mechanical and performance improvements. Both also have seven seats as standard.

The Mitsubishi is about $4000 cheaper based on RRP than the Toyota, but the final price can vary from dealer to dealer and what state you live in. The best advice is to try each one on for size and maybe even throw in contenders like the Ford Everest as a direct comparison.

The biggest potential repair cost for this make and model would probably be the replacement of the engine’s timing chains. These were of poor design and quality from the start and many Commodore V6s of this era have suffered stretched chains which require replacement. It’s not a cheap job, either, and you should budget for at least a couple of thousand dollars. While the vehicle in question has covered low kilometres, the health or otherwise of its timing chains will be down to how well it’s been serviced over the years. Any skipped servicing makes it a ticking time bomb in this regard. But even well maintained vehicles have experienced the same problem.