Ask The Guide

If you’ve tried conventional parts stores and online sellers and done no good, the next step is to try a Volkswagen specialist. These are dotted around the country with a handful in each capital city. These shops tend to stock rarer, harder to find bits and pieces and often have suppliers around the world whose aim it is to keep old cars like air-cooled VWs on the road. Even if the part you need is no longer available, a good specialist will possibly know what equivalent part number from another make and model will do the job.

If all that fails, there are also specialist cable makers who can produce one-off cables to order, provided you can supply either the correct specifications or, even better, the old, broken cable to use as a template for a new one.

The Santa Fe may well have a fuel filter below the rear seat, but it’s almost certainly located on the outside of the car (as in, under the floor) rather than inside under the seat cushion. I’d be very surprised if any of the car’s fuel system or lines ran inside the passenger compartment.

Which means it’s still possible that some fuel was spilled under the car during the filter change or that there’s even a fuel leak as a result of the change. Either could lead to a smell inside the car, but it shouldn’t persist. If it does, there’s a problem. Take it back to the dealership and ask for the problem to be fixed. If the dealership somehow spilled petrol on the seat trim or allowed fuel to enter the cabin in some other way, they are responsible for fixing it. Driving around in a car with petrol fumes inside is an obvious health and safety issue.

This sounds like a classic case of a vehicle with a fuel pump that has died. Electric fuel pumps have a very finite lifespan and, when they stop, they do so suddenly, for no apparent reason and with the result that the engine will simply not start or run at all. By spraying starting fluid into the engine, you’re giving it a sniff of fuel; enough to make it fire, but not run for long.

You’re probably looking at a new fuel pump, but don’t forget to check fuses and relays, the lines for leaks and the various fuel filters for cleanliness.

The engine in the car you’re looking at has the codename N42. It has a timing chain rather than a rubber timing belt, so that should not need to be changed for the life of the car. However, life is not always that simple and the N42 has a bit of a reputation for developing wear in the tensioners that keep the timing chain taut. If that happens, you could have a chain loose enough to jump a few teeth on the timing gears and destroy the engine in the process. So a service record and close inspection of the engine is called for before any purchase.

This model BMW was also caught up in the Takata airbag recall debacle. As a result, many BMWs of this era were actually bought back by BMW and scrapped as the cost of fixing the airbag woes was greater than the value of the cars themselves. Make sure any car like this has had the airbags replaced and is not a candidate to be crushed rather than fixed. Quoting the car’s VIN to a BMW dealership should reveal all.

This is an interesting one, because the actual battery on an ML350 is under the driver’s front seat, beneath the carpet in a little cubby hole under the floor. This is partly for better weight distribution but also for under-bonnet packaging, but it makes jump-starting or charging the battery a little bit more complex.

But Mercedes-Benz has thought this through and has provided one negative and one positive jump-point under the bonnet. You can locate them precisely by looking in the owner’s manual. By hooking a jump starter to these easily accessible posts, you can jump-start the vehicle without removing the carpet, floor and battery. As such, the same jump-points should also work as charge points for recharging the battery.

It all depends on the model and variant of the vehicle you’re talking about, but, generally speaking, the fuel rail pressure sensor on a turbo-diesel engine will be somewhere along the fuel rail. But, even if you know for absolutely certain that this sensor is the problem, we have to advise against any amateur mechanic taking on this, or any other, job that deals with the fuel system. That’s because the fuel systems on a common-rail turbo-diesel run at incredibly high pressures. So they’re dangerous things to fiddle with.

In some cases, the pressure could be enough to slice fingers off. Which means you have to know the exact process to follow in order to bleed off any residual pressure in the fuel system (even if the engine hasn’t run for days) before you can safely tackle jobs like this one. Leave it to the experts, in other words. Also, a specialist is a chance to be able to make a more accurate diagnosis than the one given by an online forum of dubious credibility.

The best way forward here is to take the car to a workshop that knows Audis and have them pressure test the cooling system. Modern cars have sealed coolant systems, suggesting that they shouldn’t lose any coolant at all. The reality is a little different, and what may have happened is that your coolant level has been falling very slowly perhaps over a period of years until the level is low enough to trigger the warning message.

By pressure testing the system, any leak should become visible and can be fixed. Water pumps, radiators, heat exchangers and the network of coolant plumbing that makes up a modern car can all develop leaks. Sometimes the leak is so small, the coolant evaporates before it ever hits the ground which is why there’s no tell-tale puddle under the car each morning.

Don’t automatically jump to the conclusion that your car has a blown head gasket; there are lots of ways for coolant to escape, which is why it’s wise to keep an eye on the level on a weekly basis.

A typical air-conditioning system in a car uses an engine-driven pump (compressor), heat exchangers and lots of ducting as well as a decent volume of compressed refrigerant gas to make it all work. If any of these things is out of kilter, the air-con may stop working.

Low gas levels, a worn out compressor, compressor clutch, or an electrical problem could be the cause here. The system is also full of interlocks to ensure that it can’t be damaged, for instance, by operating with insufficient gas or if the temperature of the system becomes too hot. At the other extreme, you might simply have a blown fuse that controls the fan circuit, at which point the system will not work either.

The best solution is to take the car to an air-conditioning specialist. The first thing they’ll do is test to see whether the system is holding pressure. If it is, the fix may be a simple re-gas of the system, at which point, chilled air may be miraculously restored. But you may find you need to replace some parts as well. But a pressure test will often be the first thing tried as the typical car air-con system loses gas over time, and that’s just a fact of life. Eventually, it may get so low the system can’t operate and there’s no more cold air.

This is why it’s important to run the air-con (even in winter) for a minute or so every week. This will help keep the seals lubricated and prevent loss of gas in the long term.

Broadly speaking, the law in WA states that you can’t increase the width of a car’s tyre more than 30 per cent over the standard fitment tyre. But since you’re only going 20mm wider, that’s not an issue and shouldn’t present any legal problems. However, it would still be wise to let your insurance company know about the increase as insurers often have different standards to the actual law-makers.

The only other hitch might be that the new tyre is physically too wide for the rim it’s being fitted to. Again, though, this is not a huge increase and should be viable. A good tyre shop will be able to check your rim size and let you know one way or the other.

This sounds like a fairly serious failure somewhere in the engine that is pressurising the cooling system (and the coolant overflow bottle) and draining the engine of the coolant it needs (which is why the overheating light is on). This can be due to a blown cylinder head gasket or some other failure within the engine that is allowing combustion pressure into the cooling system.

The best advice is to not drive the vehicle any farther and get it to a workshop who can diagnose the problem properly, rather than just guessing about the cause. Don’t forget, though, that your Triton, provided it’s been serviced properly, should still be covered by Mitsubishi’s factory warranty.