Ask The Guide

Conventional wisdom says the first place to start looking is the turbocharger and its plumbing. A turbocharger operates at very high speeds and a whistling noise is quite common. What you shouldn’t have, however, is a loud version of that noise, or a whistle that is suddenly louder than ever before.

Cracked or leaking turbo-plumbing can allow the noise to escape, but a turbocharger with a worn bearing can also suddenly become louder in its operation. So that’s where to start looking.

Why does the noise drop in the higher gears? Perhaps because you’re cruising in those gears and not accelerating hard as you do in the lower gears. Less throttle input means a slower turbocharger speed and a drop in turbo volume and pitch.

Milky oil is a big hint that the engine’s oil and coolant are mixing, suggesting a cracked block, cylinder head or blown head gasket. But just because the oil has not turned milky does not rule out a head gasket leak, as the coolant can sometimes find its way into the combustion chamber(s) rather than the sump (oil-pan).

What would be interesting to know is if the coolant disappears in a week of normal driving, or even if the car is left to stand for the week. If it’s the latter, then you more likely have an external leak somewhere in the cooling system’s maze of hoses, pipes, radiators and catch-tanks.

The first thing to do is conduct a pressure test on the cooling system. This involves topping up the coolant and then using air to pressurise the system to see where the coolant appears from. You may find it’s something as simple as a loose hose clamp or a cracked plastic catch-tank.

If that doesn’t provide any hints there’s a kit called a TK Test which samples the coolant to see if there are any gasses (from the combustion process) that shouldn’t be there. If they are present, you probably have a head gasket leak. But don’t rush to that conclusion yet.

This light is properly called the Malfunction Indicator Light, so it’s kind of like a check-engine light. It’s telling you there’s something not right somewhere on the car and that you need to scan the car to get a more focussed idea of what the problem is.

The message is not to try to cancel the light and ignore it, because it could be being triggered by something you need to attend to promptly before further damage is done.

Most workshops will have a code-reader that plugs into the car and talks to the car’s computer to learn exactly what the root cause of this problem is. In many cases on a Jeep, the MIL will be triggered by a problem with the fuel and/or emissions system, typically a dud oxygen sensor, a loose fuel cap or even a tiny leak in the fuel system.

Once the technician has checked what fault codes are present, they can usually use the same code reader to cancel the MIL.

It all depends on how you define long and bulky. But no seven-seater is going to be exactly small, is it? That’s because, to accommodate the third row of seats necessary to seat seven a vehicle physically has to be a certain length and there’s just no getting around that.

But I take your point; a lot of the seven-seat SUVs out there do seem pretty big. Again, however, that’s not a bad thing if you plan to fill all three rows of seats and still have some room left for luggage. The smaller seven-seaters aren’t all that good at this as the third row gobbles up the luggage space, making these cars best for those who only need seven seats on an occasional basis. If that’s your situation there are lots of mid-sized seven seaters around, but they’re pretty much all SUVs.

And while it goes against your preference for a smaller vehicle, the very best seven-seaters aren’t SUVs. They’re usually people-mover vans such as the Ford Tourneo, Kia Carnival and VW ID. Buzz. In fact, some of these even seat eight. They’re also a lot better for accessing the rearmost row of seats and they’ll still have lots of luggage space even with all seats occupied. And, yes, they look big, but that’s physics for you.

In the meantime, you could look at slightly less bulky options including the Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-80 and Toyota Kluger. There’s also been speculation recently that Subaru’s seven-seat Tribeca might make a return to the Australian market.

A trip to your local transmission specialist is the first step here, and don’t even think about driving the vehicle father than that. You could easily do more damage than is already existing. Modern automatic transmissions are incredibly complex things and there’s a lot that can go wrong.

You might be lucky and simply have a low transmission fluid level (although you’ll still need to find and fix the cause of the leak). But, equally, you may have a transmission that is literally on its last legs. The problem is that all these symptoms can show up through all sorts of transmission woes.

Either way, a specialist workshop should be able to diagnose the problem and work from there.

Air-conditioning relies on fans as well as the actual refrigeration system to move the chilled air around the cabin. If the fan isn’t working, that won’t happen. So a check of the fan in question would be a good place to start. Perhaps there’s a wiring fault, maybe the fan is intermittently failing to kick in.

There’s another possibility, too, and it’s more common than you might think. Some air-con systems tend to build up ice inside the system’s plumbing. If that happens, you’ll suddenly get no air-con and possibly even zero airflow through he vents as the ice blocks the trunking completely. The solution is to turn the system off at that point, allow everything to thaw and then turn it back on. Try that process next time the vents fail to see if that fixes it (temporarily).

If the engine is not getting hot and the temperature gauge is reading normal, it’s difficult to see how the coolant could be boiling. Perhaps what you’re seeing is the coolant in the overflow bottle bubbling, which can appear as though it’s boiling. But the reality might be that you have a leaking cylinder head gasket.

When that happens, gasses from the combustion process can escape into the engine’s coolant system and appear as bubbles in the overflow system. And to the observer, that can look very much like boiling coolant.

Either way, you need to find a good workshop that can check this stuff and figure out what’s really going on. Only then can you diagnose the root problem and tackle it.

Since you’ve been driving manual cars for many years now, you’ll be aware that some gearshifts are just better than others. However, none should be causing you to apply lots of force just to select a gear.

You could be dealing with a worn clutch which is making selection difficult, or a selector mechanism (cables, linkages and pivots) that are worn or have run out of lubricant. Even the adjustment of the shift cables can cause a problem like this.

I’d start with lubricating everything that connects the gearstick to the transmission and work the lever through the gears a few times to see if the lubricant makes any difference. If not, you might have to dig a bit deeper, checking for frayed shift cables of frozen joints. If you’re really unlucky, you may have wear or damage inside the gearbox that is making it difficult to select first gear.

But in the meantime, you can try this trick. When you’re stopped at the lights and ready to select first, instead of going straight for that gear, slip the lever into second for a brief moment and then try for first. Sometimes, this can assist selecting first, as you’re using the synchromesh on second to help with engaging first. This is often a great trick for a worn transmission.

Rule of thumb says the correct on-road pressure is somewhere between 30 and 40psi for tyres like these. But since you’re losing traction regardless of inflation pressure, who knows. Clearly something else is going on here. Just for starters, the MU-X is fitted with both traction control and stability control which should rule out losing traction in the first place. Are these systems working? If not, you’re technically driving an unroadworthy vehicle.

How old are the tyres? Were they fitted to your previous vehicle and swapped over to the new one? Tyres have a finite lifespan beyond which the rubber compound starts to degrade and the tyres lose grip. That’s something to check. Perhaps the rubber has been contaminated by something like oil or grease. Has the vehicle ever been parked in a pool of oil or diesel? It sounds pretty daft, but is the fuel tank or filler neck allowing diesel to leak on to the tyres or flick up on to them as you drive?

You also need to be aware that as an off-road tyre, on-road grip will never be as good as a tyre designed to work mainly on bitumen. The tread pattern and compound are both compromises in the interests of going off-road, so you can’t expect passenger-car tyre grip from a tyre like this one on a vehicle like your Isuzu.

This make and model of tyre seems to be pretty well received among users, although some have mentioned a lack of wet bitumen grip as something to keep in mind. Don’t forget, either, that in really wet or greasy conditions, you can safely switch to high-range four-wheel-drive to prevent wheelspin and improve your safety margin.

It’s possible that the same problem is causing both the check engine and oil light to light up. That’s because a low oil pressure or oil level light will sometimes trigger both the oil and check-engine lights. I assume the basics such as oil level (on the dipstick) have been checked.

Continuing to drive a car with a flashing oil light on the dashboard is asking for trouble, to be honest. This needs to be investigated and you might want to look for another dealership who can better manage this stuff.

Either way, it’s a dealership problem because this sort of thing should be covered by the factory warranty if there really is a problem. But even if it’s just a computer glitch that’s lighting the warning lights up now and then, you need to know what that is and put it right.