Ask The Guide

It could be a single oil leak that is showing up in more than one place. The first place to check would be the rocker cover gasket which are prone to leaks (not just on Hyundais). If this has failed, oil could be leaking along the edge of the rocker cover and on to the gearbox, while the same leak could appear as though it’s coming from the spark plug socket (as well as a variety of other places).

The best way to find the location of an oil leak, is usually to clean the engine thoroughly, removing all the build-up oil, grease and dirt. Allow the engine to dry and then take the car for a drive. By continually checking the engine over the next few days you might be able to spot the source when the oil leak reappears.

It’s definitely not normal and the reason it feels dangerous when it loses grip and traction is because it is, indeed, very dangerous. Your car is fitted with stability control and anti-lock brakes, two safety features that help prevent the wheels skidding even on a wet road. Obviously, these features don’t make the car uncrashable, because they can’t do anything about the laws of physics, but they should help reduce the chances of the tyres losing grip.

If you’re experiencing skidding during normal driving and braking, then I’d suggest the car has a fault with either or both of these technologies and it’s really not safe – or legal – to drive in its current state. It needs to be checked out by a specialist who should also check the condition and inflation of the tyres, as worn tyres are a major contributor to a loss of grip in the wet.

It could be a fuel problem, but it could easily be something electrical, or perhaps something from left-field such as a blocked exhaust system. Perhaps a sensor somewhere in the driveline is functioning properly until it gets hot and then shutting down, causing the engine to stall. Perhaps you have a bad earth point or loose electrical contact. Maybe the fuel pump is on its last legs and unable to supply enough fuel to keep the engine running.

It’s all a bit of a guessing game, but fortunately, modern cars have on-board computers which detect problems and log them until the car can be scanned. At that point, the glitches and problems should be revealed and you can start to plan how to solve the problem.

In modern cars with bonded windscreen, the glass is actually a structural part of the car. Therefore, if the car cops a big enough impact (say, hitting a pothole at speed) it’s conceivable that the stress passing through the whole car could cause a crack in the glass. Stress cracks in windscreens are usually fairly straight and will emanate from the edge of the glass.

The other way to crack a windscreen is to subject it to extremes of temperature. Pouring boiling water over an icy windscreen on a cold morning is a great way to crack the glass, but high interior temperatures in hot weather can also cause cracking in extreme cases.

Suzuki, like just about every other car-maker has a list of things that aren’t covered by warranty, including batteries, tyre, brakes pads and, as you’ve discovered, glass.

This is a pretty well known problem with the three-litre turbo-diesel that Toyota was fitting to Prados between 2009 and 2014. The problem began when Toyota redesigned the pistons of the engine to help it achieve Euro 4 emissions standards. Earlier versions of the motor that didn’t comply with Euro 4 did not have the same problem.

The piston cracking most commonly occurs once the engine has covered something like 100,000km or 150,000km. It was also most likely to occur in engines that had been modified to produce more turbo-boost or vehicles that had been used for extended periods of towing heavy loads.

Toyota did issue a service bulletin for the problem and began fitting post-2014 engines with different fuel injectors and a revised piston design. Piston failures in these later engines are rarer but still not entirely unknown. Even though a service bulletin was issued, Toyota did not issue a recall for the affected vehicles.

It’s very possible that this is a problem with the brake’s booster system. To give the braking system extra oomph, it uses a vacuum operated booster unit that multiplies the force in your leg. The vacuum comes from the engine’s intake system. If this booster develops a vacuum leak, it can allow excess air into the engine’s intake manifold. This extra air messes up the air-fuel mixture and the engine can start to rev up.

The brake booster is the first place a mechanic will check when presented with this problem.

The ABS warning is for a problem with the anti-lock braking system (that's what it stands for) and the image of a serving car is to warn you that there’s also potentially a problem with the car’s stability control. So, no, it’s not the transmission at fault here.

Both the ABS and stability control are crucial safety systems and the car really shouldn’t be driven until these problems have been checked out and rectified. The first thing to do is take the car to a workshop and have it electronically scanned. The onboard computer will have logged the faults as they were detected and will be able to identify the problem areas to give the mechanic a head-start on working out what’s wrong.

No, there was only one automatic gearbox, a six-speed unit that was vastly more popular than the other choice, a six-speed manual. For the 2017 model year, Holden upgraded the automatic transmission with what’s called a centrifugal pendulum absorber torque converter.

This absorber was a type of dampener designed to reduce vibrations form within the torque converter and improve the driveline’s smoothness. But this was applied to all 2017 Colorado diesels, meaning the transmission differs from a 2016 or earlier unit.

Chery claims that the Omoda 5 GT was only ever going to be a limited-run model which is why it’s been axed just about a year after it was originally launched. If you are still keen on the car, then buying a 2024 model is your only option, as production of the car stopped a few months ago.

To clear showrooms of remaining stock, Chery is offering a $3000 discount on the driveaway price of both the GT and GT AWD, so maybe that will sway your decision.

This generation Ford Focus was the first to use electro-hydraulic power-steering. As such, you can’t transpose the rack and pinion hardware from any other model; it would need to be this exact version of the Focus for everything to be compatible.

Once you’ve swapped the hardware, the electronics would also need to be coded and matched to the car’s body computer, as this is what controls the speed-sensitive variations in the steering assistance as well as functions such as the self-parking facility.