Ask The Guide

This is a more common problem than you might imagine. Because air has to escape the fuel tank to allow the fuel in, you can sometimes achieve what is pretty much an air lock when the nozzle prevents the air getting out fast enough. Either that, or the fuel filler neck is shaped so that it splashes the fuel back against the pump nozzle, making the sensor in the nozzle think the tank is full.

Some cars will be fine on some pumps and not others, while some cars are just generally a pain to fill. Yet other cars will be fine on a flat surface, but won’t fill properly on any sort of an angle or slope.

The best trick to try is to insert the nozzle into the filler neck and then turn it 90 degrees. This has the effect of directing the fuel spray somewhere other than straight back up the nozzle’s spout and triggering the pump’s shut-off mechanism. The other thing to try is to pull the trigger on the nozzle, but not all the way. That can sometimes slow the flow enough to prevent the shut-off. If that doesn’t work, you’re stuck with trickling the fuel in very slowly to avoid the pump shutting off.

Going back to first principles, anywhere that a power wire that should be insulated is allowed to touch an earthed part of the car is a potential source of a short circuit. As such, there are about a million places where a wire or cable carrying 12 volts from the battery could be shorting out by touching an earthed part of the car.

Typical sites of a short-circuit include anywhere where a wire runs through a metal bulkhead (say, from the car’s interior to its engine bay) anywhere a wire is continually flexing (the wiring inside a door jamb where it passes through the body) a switch of any sort or anywhere else where friction could have worn away the wire’s insulation. Sometimes the insulation just gets old and falls off the wire (Mercedes-Benz cars from the mid-90s were notorious for this).

The clue will be in what components have suddenly stopped working. Checking the fuse box to see what fuses have blown in response to the short circuit is also a good indicator or where to start looking. If you suspect the short-circuit is at the battery itself, there will be no need for forensic investigation; a short at the battery will produce a violent spark and lots of smoke. Unless, of course, the car is fitted with a great safety feature called a circuit breaker on or near the positive battery terminal. If you’ve suddenly lost all power to the car, that’s where to start looking.

Finally, don’t assume that a loss of power to the car or some of its components is due to a short circuit. Sometimes a fuse can simply fail for no good reason and call a halt to play. If you’re unsure, an auto electrician can work miracles that the rest of us cannot generally fully comprehend.

If the engine mounts are indeed in good condition (and it can be hard to tell just by looking) then you might be looking at a problem with the idle speed settings. Engines typically idle more slowly when they’re cold and in gear and there’s usually a compensation for this. In an electronically controlled engine like the Sirion’s, this idle-up function will be a job for the onboard computer. But if the computer has lost the plot or isn’t getting the right signal from, say, a temperature sensor, then it can’t bump the idle up a fraction when it needs to. And then, once warmed up, the engine seems normal.

A cold engine that spits a little water out the tailpipe is completely normal. Water is one of the by-products of the combustion process. It’s black because it mixes with soot in the exhaust system. But we only see it when the engine is cold, as once warmed up, the exhaust system turns the water to steam and we don’t see it. A black exhaust in a modern car that runs on ULP is completely normal also.

First things first: are you sure the leak is coming from the gearbox and not the engine? It can be very hard to discern the difference in a manual car, although it’s easier in an automatic as the transmission fluid is usually a red colour.

Beyond that, oil can escape from a gearbox through a variety of places. The breather could be allowing fluid out, the pan seal could be leaking, the rear gearbox seal could be faulty or you could even have a cracked transmission casing. Don’t rule out a leaking drain plug, either, as this is a very common source of a leak. You might even find the leak is coming from somewhere within the transmission cooler and its plumbing.

The air-conditioning system is not critical to the car’s operation, only its comfort. As such, if you can find a belt that still drives all the ancillaries like the coolant pump, alternator, power-steering pump and whatever else is belt-driven on this model, then it’s certainly possible. What you have to ensure is that the shorter belt is the correct length and is still properly tensioned by the existing tensioning pulleys. You may have to change pulleys and brackets to achieve this. If you’re lucky, it will only be the air-conditioner itself that is driven by an auxiliary belt, with everything else running off the primary drive belt. If that’s the case, you simply remove the air-con belt and drive on.

In the old days, you simply bought the appropriate belt for the same make and model without factory air-con and fitted that. But more modern cars with standard air-conditioning can be trickier to bypass. But it should be possible, even if you have to take a piece of string the correct length to an auto parts store and go through the various belts to find one the right length. Either that, or find the same make and model at a wrecking yard that was not fitted with factory air-conditioning and use the drive belt pulleys and tensioners from that car. Never use a second-hand drive belt, however.

The noise could be from the electric motors themselves or in the gears and cogs that physically move the mirrors to their new positions. Pulling the mirror apart and lubricating these mechanisms might help reduce the noise and may even fix the one mirror’s reluctance to move through its full range of positions.

As far as warranty goes, the situation is a bit complicated in that the dealer may examine the noise and decide that it’s not abnormal. But what you should do before the warranty runs out is have the car examined and the problem logged at dealership level. That way, if anything goes wrong as a result of the problem, even if it’s beyond the warranty period, you have what’s called a pre-existing condition whereby the problems is Subaru’s to fix because it existed while the warranty was still current, even if it wasn’t fixed at that time. The point being that the dealer can’t delay a fix reported during the warranty period and then claim that the vehicle is out of warranty and refuse to fix the problem.

This generation of Holden engines was prone to failure of the crankcase ventilation valve (PCV). When it failed, it caused a vacuum leak in the engine that could easily cause rough running and hard starting. It would also possibly trigger a check-engine light.

Depending on the model and year of the car, you might be able to fit a replacement PCV, but sometimes the solution was to replace the entire rocker cover assembly, which included the valve in question. In many cases, the valve failure was accompanied by a failed rocker cover gasket that leaked oil on to the spark plugs, making the car run even more erratically. Don’t be tempted to try a second-hand PCV from a wrecked Barina. The chances are every high that it’s PCV will be trashed, too.

It’s a bit hard to know what’s going on here. If a tyre is scrubbing on its inside edge, it’s often a problem with the camber settings (the amount of lean on the tyre from top to bottom). If it was realigned incorrectly, it’s conceivable that too much camber was removed and now the opposite problem is occurring where the outside edge is wearing too quickly. That said, sometimes incorrect toe-in and toe-out settings can cause similarly odd tyre wear.

Either way, this sort of problem should not be beyond the skills of a wheel alignment specialist to rectify without any mechanical changes to the vehicle or its suspension. In extreme cases, adjustable suspension bushes or mounting points can be fitted in place of the standard items to provide a greater range of adjustment. You may find that rectification is warranty issue, but if the misalignment came about through wear and tear or hitting a pothole or big bump, then it may not be covered by the factory warranty. Previous crash damage that has not ben repaired properly is also another common cause of weird tyre wear due to poor wheel alignment.

You need to go back to basics here. Check that the battery is connected firmly and that all the connections and low-voltage leads that power and trigger the starter motor are in their correct places and receiving power. Don’t forget to check for earth straps and cables that might have been left off in the reassembly process, too.

If the car is getting power (and the dashboard lights suggest it is) then there’s a problem between the ignition key and the starter motor. Tackle it methodically, checking for power (a test lead or multimeter will be invaluable for this) as you work your way towards the starter motor and you’ll probably find it’s something really simple and basic. Make sure the fuse or relay for the starter motor hasn’t been fried during the gearbox swap, too.

Ford’s EcoBoost engines have a bit of a track record with blown head gaskets thanks to the fundamental design of the crankcase where it meets the cylinder head. Given the relatively high turbo-boost pressure some of these engines use to produce their impressive performance, the head gasket can fail.

But it’s also fair to say that this engine design has also seen its share of overheating problems, blown turbochargers and coolant leaks (often into the cylinders). With that in mind, don’t bother guessing what the problem is, allow a mechanic to inspect the engine and give you a professional opinion based on facts.