Ask The Guide

Tesla certainly does things differently, starting with the cars themselves and extending right throughout the entire purchasing and ownership experience. Basically, Tesla has no dealerships per se, so, to buy a brand-new Tesla you go to the website, create an online account, design the specifics (options and colours) of the car you want and then place your order. And it’s all done electronically.

You then have three days to make any changes to the car’s specification, after which it’s pretty much locked down and Tesla will have begun assembling the bits and pieces that you’ve ordered. It’s after this three-day period that you’ll actually talk to a Tesla employee, who will guide you through the paperwork, payment options and delivery details.

In a way, it’s no different to any other form of online shopping but it does presume that Tesla buyers are also internet savvy enough to trust this process. After all, we’re not talking about pocket-money here, are we?

There could be a couple of things going on here. The first is that these engines were old-fashioned mechanical fuel-pump units, so they need to be primed. That involves getting all of the air out of the system before they can start to pump diesel again.

From memory, there’s a manual priming pump in the engine bay (I think near the fuel filter) and the idea is to hand-pump the primer until the plunger starts to feel solid (meaning there’s fuel, not air in there) and then crank the engine till it starts. It can take some time, though. This is precisely why it’s bad form to run an old-school diesel completely out of fuel. Make sure your battery and starter motor are up to the job, too.

The other possibility is that the new pump needs to be timed to the engine. In these set-ups, the pump not only creates the fuel pressure, it also provides the timing for each injector to fire into each cylinder. If this timing is out, the engine won’t run.

Beyond that, look for blocked filters, air leaks in the fuel hoses and blocked fuel lines from the tank. And if in doubt, take it to somebody who knows what they’re doing, because having high-pressure fuel spraying around the place is never a good idea.

These late Commodores (the very last of the locally-made Commodores, actually) do, in fact, have a history of fuel injector problems. Holden has claimed that poor quality fuel is the cause, but some technicians disagree, arguing that it’s a problem inherent in the injector’s design. Some owners have been told that it’s better to run these cars on 95 or 98-octane fuel, even though the LS3 V8 is rated to run on 91-octane ULP. But it seems even cars that have been run on the pricier brew are still recording problems with the injectors.

The faulty injectors send the engine into a potential lean-mixture situation, at which point the on-board computer intervenes and sends the car into limp-home mode to avoid engine damage. That’s why you’re seeing all those warning lights on the dashboard, while the injectors themselves are what’s causing the rough running you’ve reported.

There’s been no recall on Holden’s part, but the word on the street is that a Holden dealer will replace the injectors free of charge if you present the car at the dealership with the symptoms in evidence. Holden’s announcement that it will cease to trade in Australia should not affect this situation.

All three have their long suits, Adam. The Toyota is regarded as the safe buy in terms of reliability and retained value. The D-Max is highly regarded for its ruggedness and tough engine. And the Ranger is the relative sophisticate of the bunch with more on-road performance and a bit more refinement thrown in.

For on-road work, I’d probably take the Ranger over the others, but off-road, there’s very little in it. As far as off-road touring goes, all three will do the job and it will come down to personal preference. With that in mind, you need to put aside a weekend and visit all three showrooms and organise a decent test drive. There will be things you love and loathe about each, but again, it’s down to the individual.

You need to remember, though, that all these modern utes with their common-rail turbo-diesel engines require some pretty specific maintenance. In that sense, the greater saturation of Toyota dealers out in the sticks might sway you (although Ford has plenty of regional dealers, too).

I’m inclined to think your tyre store might be right, Anthony, and heavy vehicles like the Prado, especially if they’ve been used of-road can, in fact, damage their own rims to the point where the wheels aren’t perfectly round any longer. It would have been pretty obvious to the people fitting the tyres when the new tyres were balanced; the out-of-round rims would have made balancing them almost impossible. Don’t be fooled by the fact that the wobble happens at speed, because that’s simply a function of the harmonics in the wonky wheels building up to the point where you can feel it.

However, to answer your second question, yes, there are some other things to check before rushing out and buying new rims. Is the vehicle lifted on its suspension? If so, there’s a very good chance the wheel alignment settings (particularly the castor angle) can be thrown out. This needs to be corrected to maintain the vehicle’s stability at speed, and a wheel-wobble can sometimes show up as a symptom.

How are the suspension linkages and bushes generally? Worn bushes can easily cause a vehicle to wobble at speed, as can bent bits and pieces from off-road use. Another thing that can throw a wobble into the equation is an out-of-balance tail-shaft or worn CV joints and universal joints in the driveline (of which there is plenty in an all-wheel-drive Prado).

But if it is your wheel rims at fault, there’s probably not much else you can do but replace them. Sometimes a steel rim can be re-rolled or trued, but alloy wheels (which is probably what you have) are often throwaways once they’re bent out of shape.

Detailed information like this is not usually included in the sales brochure. Nor do many (any?) road tests of a particular vehicle usually go into such detail. So in the end, I had to contact Haval Motors Australia which, in turn, contacted head office in China to find this info.

So, here’s how it pans out Kim: All the legroom figures are dependent on where the front seat is positioned and in the H2, front seat legroom is anything from 870mm to 1060mm. Rear seat legroom is from 650 to 910mm. In the H6, the same figures are 790 to 1000mm and 710 to 950mm respectively.

When it comes to headroom, front seat headroom in the H2 is 990mm and in the rear it’s 970mm. In the H6, the equivalent figures are 990mm and 950mm.

In the end, of course, those figures are just numbers and a far better idea is to visit a Haval showroom and take a seat in both vehicles to really see whether they suit you.

Given that most 308 CCs of that era and with sort of mileage seem to be selling for around $11,000 or $12,000 (sometimes a bit more) that seems like a pretty keen price. Make sure the service record is complete, though.

Would this, by any chance, a friend or relative’s car who has been offered $8100 as a trade-in? People often offer a car to somebody they know at the same price as the trade-in offer. It can be a good way to go as the dealer will sometimes offer what’s called a no-trade discount if they don’t have to bother with a trade-in they don’t particularly want.

Some Mazda 3s built between 2007 and 2008 did, indeed, suffer from a loss of power-steering assistance and were fixed by Mazda as part of a nationwide program. Mazda pulled up short of recalling these vehicles, arguing that even if assistance was lost, the car would still have its steering.

In any case, your car was built after this troublesome batch of cars, but I’ve still heard of a few, later, Mazda 3s suffering the same problem. One suggestion I’ve heard is that the power-steering fluid becomes thick and can’t flow properly. From what I can gather, the only real fix is to replace the power-steering pump, hoses and fluid. That won’t be cheap, but suddenly having the steering lose assistance can’t be much fun. Or very safe.

Like you, Monty, I’ve also heard of power-steering problems caused by electrical faults (sometimes as simple as a lose battery terminal) but I think those apply to later cars with electric power-assistance. Electrically-assisted power-steering didn’t come to the Mazda 3 in Australia until 2014.

It sounds awfully like your car’s body computer is at fault here, Leslie. The body computer is the brain that talks to the keys and then commands the doors to unlock and the immobiliser to disarm so the engine can start. This unit also controls things like the power windows, interior lighting, and even the intermittent windscreen wipers. It also talks to the engine control module, and without that conversation happening properly, the engine won’t start. The problem is that the body computer can develop faults with some of these functions while others work perfectly, making diagnosis even trickier.

If it is on the blink, a faulty body computer can have all sorts of effects including doors that won’t lock or unlock, and can even cause the doors to lock momentarily before magically unlocking again the minute your back is turned.

I have also heard of keys becoming worn out with age and use, and if the car requires the key to be in very close proximity to unlock doors, the key could be at fault, too. The other possibility is that an aftermarket alarm system is interfering with the car’s standard functions.

Colleagues of mine have noted that the C43 isn’t at its happiest when taking off from a standing start sometimes, particularly if the stop-start function is engaged. That said, the harshest description of the problem was the odd clunk when launching the car, but even with that system switched off, the AMG sometimes seems to have problems deciding which gear to select, leading to a lack of smoothness. Perhaps it’s not helped by the fact that the car is all-wheel-drive, and grips the road extremely well when perhaps a little `give’ in the driveline mightn’t be a bad thing. Maybe it’s the traction-control stepping in too early and interrupting the flow of power to the wheels.

That said, your problem sounds a lot more severe than that. The C43 uses a conventional torque converter automatic transmission, so it doesn’t suffer some of the jerkiness that other cars using dual-clutch technology can. It’s puzzling though, that the computer isn’t throwing up any fault codes, so maybe your car is simply doing what some C43s do to a greater or lesser extent. If it’s as bad as you say, it’s not good enough and you should pursue the problem with Mercedes-Benz and have the problem corrected under warranty.