Ask The Guide

Without knowing more, your problem could be caused by quite a few different things, including wheel bearings, driveshafts, brake rotors and even worn suspension components. But a really common cause of a vibration at a particular speed is a wheel that has shed one or more of its little balancing weights.

Given the parlous state of this nation’s roads at the moment, hitting a big pothole is a pretty good bet right now. And the shock of that impact is a typical way for the wheel to shed its balance weights. These small, lead weights are added to the wheel when a tyre shop fits new tyres. The idea is to use the lead to balance the wheel so it spins smoothly. Lose the weight and you suddenly have an out-of-balance wheel and tyre and a vibration is a likely consequence. A good tyre shop will be able to check this for you.

I really need more information on this one, Lance. Is the car actually overheating? Or is it just that the thermatic fan seems to switch itself on and off randomly? If the latter is the case and the car is not running hot, I’d suggest you don’t have a problem at all.

The fact is that thermatic fans are designed to work this way. Instead of a belt-driven fan running all the time – even when it’s not needed for cooling – the thermatic fan looks at the temperature of the coolant and switches on only when it’s necessary to keep the engine at the correct temperature. Which means a thermatic fan that operates intermittently is perfectly normal.

You might also find you have a second thermatic fan which will switch on when you operate the air-conditioner. That’s because the air-con’s compressor puts extra load on the engine, requiring a little extra cooling. Either way, electric (thermatic) fans are only designed to switch on when they’re needed.

Any time an engine starts to lose engine oil, it’s either going to be because of a leak somewhere or because there’s wear or damage inside the engine. A mechanical workshop should be able to carry out some fairly simple checks to rule out either possibility. In the meantime, use the vehicle sparingly and keep an eagle eye on the level of oil on the dipstick. Running the engine oil too low is a sure way to destroy the engine, when the fix might have been a simple leak.

It’s probably fair to say this wasn’t a great time in Peugeot reliability or build quality. Overall, these Peugeots (like a lot of European designed and engineered cars over the years) didn’t like Australian heat cycles and could start to wear in places they wouldn’t have in Europe.

The biggest of this model’s problems was a propensity for the timing chain to wear prematurely, causing all sorts of internal engine problems and, in some cases, the need for a new engine to be fitted. To be fair, this problem seems to be concentrated on the earlier (pre-2011) versions of this car, but we’d still be very careful about checking the engine on a later one as well. The direct fuel-injection system also meant that the backs of the intake valves weren’t being cleaned by a squirt of fuel every time the engine fired, and this can lead to a build-up of carbon in the intake tract with poor running and a misfire the likely results.

The bottom line is that only a Peugeot 308 with low kilometres (as this one has) and an impeccable service history should be considered. Even then, there are possibly better, more reliable, alternatives.

Even though your car has a hybrid driveline, the bit that runs on petrol uses the same technology as any other Toyota petrol engine. So E10 is fine according to Toyota, although it also says 10 per cent (hence E10) is the highest percentage of ethanol you should consider using. Likewise, 95 RON petrol presents no problems.

Yes, like the vast majority of dual-cab utes sold in Australia, the Holden Rodeo was indeed built in Thailand, at the Isuzu plant (the Rodeo was an Isuzu D-Max under the skin apart from the petrol V6 version which used a Holden-made engine). But diesel Rodeos used the Isuzu 4JJ1 four-cylinder diesel which used a timing chain rather than a rubber toothed timing belt. As such, the chain should be good for the life of the engine.

You could be looking at any number of causes for this, and some of them herald the demise of your engine. Get a mechanic to check the car out. They will probably do a compression test, a leak-down test and have a close listen to the engine both at idle and under load.

If the cracking sound is a backfire or misfire, you may have an ignition problem. But the smoke is a bit more involved as it depends on the colour of the smoke. Black smoke suggests poor fuelling, but blue or grey smoke often means internal engine wear.

Very often, a whistling noise caused by air passing over the vehicle is caused not by the window openings, but the actual door openings. If the rubber door seals are from a bad batch or the doors have not been aligned properly on their hinges at the factory, this very annoying whistling sound can be the result. Fitting window-shields to force the air around the window openings won’t do a darn thing if the noise is from the door rubbers, which sounds like what might be going on here.

At least the dealership has admitted that there’s a problem, so stay on top of them until the problem is sorted out. And definitely do not take “they all do that” for an answer. A simple mechanical seal should not be beyond the skills of a modern car-maker.

This really does sound a bit like a head gasket problem. Even though the coolant and oil aren’t mixing (as you might expect with a blown head gasket) if the gasket blows between the coolant passages and the combustion chamber, the pressure of the engine’s combustion (particularly when the turbocharger is boosting when, say, climbing a long hill) can pressurise the cooling system, leading to the sorts of problems you’re having, including ejecting the coolant all over the place.

But until you’ve done a couple of simple checks, there’s no way of knowing whether there’s a blockage or other problem with the cooling system that is allowing the engine to become too hot. At that point, the coolant will also force its way out of the engine with a similar set of symptoms. A chemical check (called a TK test) will be able to identify whether combustion gasses are finding their way into the coolant, suggesting a head gasket failure., A good mechanic should also be able to tell if there’s a blockage in the coolant system or a problem with the coolant pump.

The law in Queensland suggests (because it’s not totally clear from the website) that you can fit larger wheels, although I couldn’t find a definitive limit to how much bigger you could go. But, the rules also state that the overall diameter of a replacement tyre on a car like the GLC 220d can be no more than 15mm more than the tyres fitted as standard to that car. So, while that suggest you could go up to 22-inch wheels (from the standard 20-inch wheels) the tyres fitted to them would have to be a much lower profile to keep within that 15mm diameter increase requirement.

This would have a fairly big impact on the cost of the tyres when you need to replace them, but also on ride quality as you’d be sacrificing a lot of sidewall flex with the lower-profile rubber. And there are other considerations: The replacement tyres can not be more than 1.3 times as wide as the standard tyres, must not protrude from the wheel arch at the straight-ahead and must maintain speedometer accuracy.

The best advice is to buy the new wheels and tyres through a proper tyre specialist who will be able to give you the full story on what’s legal, what’s not and what’s advisable. Plenty of car owners have discovered the hard way that the wrong replacement wheels and tyres can ruin the driving experience.