Ask The Guide

This is a very contentious issue and occurs when the car decides it’s in mortal danger if it’s driven any farther. In many cases a car will go into limp-home mode with reduced power to get you home without further damage, but in the Captiva’s case, it can go one step beyond limp-home mode and simply shut itself down, lock the driver out of the equation and refuse all attempts at being moved. This has severe ramifications if it does so on a level crossing, for instance.

In any case, this condition is usually triggered by a serious fault to do with the engine and can include a lack of oil or a severe overheating condition. When things cool down after a while, the car will sometimes restart, but in the meantime, it’s not going anywhere. The suspicion is that you have a major mechanical problem on your hands, and continuing to drive the car (when it decides to co-operate) puts you in danger of a catastrophic driveline failure.

The Grandeur was Hyundai’s first serious crack at a large luxury car. The V6 engine and automatic transmission seem pretty sound over time, but the kilometres on this example are right up there. Any car with this many kilometres could be a candidate for new suspension, new brakes and who knows what else. So, what may seem on the surface like a bargain (the average price is closer to $6000 or $7000) might not be the case if you have to scrap the car in a year or so because it needs too many repairs.

Then again, at the price, you’re not throwing away the national debt, are you? So perhaps, if you trust your mate, it’s worth a punt, but only if you can comfortably afford to walk away from it if it goes wrong.

I’ll assume by 'in' you mean the fan that blows climate-controlled air into the cabin and not the fan that cools the radiator under the bonnet. Like anything else powered by an electric motor, these should be almost silent, although the sound of the actual air rushing through the trunking (heater plumbing) and out through the vents can usually be heard when the fan is running full blast.

The most common causes for this noise to change are a failed bearing in the motor which will also potentially affect its running speed, or something foreign caught in the fan’s blades (leaves and dross from parking under trees is a common cause of this).

Cleaning out the fan’s trunking and/or replacing the fan is the solution, but in some cases, this involves fairly major disassembly of the car’s dashboard and a huge labour bill.

You could be looking at a couple of problems here. Either there’s a recurring problem with the car that is causing the check-engine light to illuminate, or the problem was fixed at one of the four previous service appointments, but the service team has consistently failed to zero (reset) the warning light.

In most cases, these check-engine lights are cancelled via the on-board scanning process which, coincidentally, would also tell you if there’s a constant problem forcing the check-engine warning to light up. Either way, it’s back to the workshop for an electronic vehicle scan to rule out the latter and/or reset the former.

There’s only one solution you need to worry about here and that’s taking the vehicle back to GWM and insisting that this important safety gear is made to work properly and that the problem with the shifting is sorted out permanently and completely.

This is why we have new-vehicle warranties, and the consumer law in this country is quite simple when it comes to manufacturers’ responsibilities in situations like yours. In the case of safety gear not working properly, the vehicle is technically unroadworthy, so you wouldn’t even be able to sell it.

The Corolla of this vintage has a fine reputation as a vehicle unlikely to fail in such a spectacular way. Assuming, as you say, the servicing has been by the book and the car has not been abused, used to tow massive loads, or operated as a rally car, then the suspicion is that the crankshaft of this particular example may have contained a casting or material fault from day one. This wouldn’t be visible to the people who assembled the engine, but could lead to such a failure after a period of time.

I’d be inclined to talk to Toyota Australia’s customer service department to see if there’s any financial or mechanical help on offer to repair your vehicle. Even though your vehicle is out of warranty, you might find Toyota will be as horrified as you at such a major failure at such low kilometres and will do something about it. Assuming that a manufacturing flaw is, indeed, the cause of the failure.

If you don’t get anywhere but wish to pursue it, an independent examination by an appropriate engineer might be able to pin-point the cause of the failure, at which point you might have another bargaining chip. Certainly a broken crankshaft at 62,000km is neither normal nor acceptable.

Torque converters have been known to seize and, if that’s the case, it could stall the engine because there’s no slip to allow the engine to idle while the car is stationary. You need to have this checked by a transmission specialist who may have seen this very thing before. Either way, the vehicle won’t be going anywhere under its own power.

Even if the gearbox itself had frozen solid, the torque converter should still allow enough slip to let the engine idle. So that’s definitely where to start the investigation.

There’s no hard and fast rule on this stuff, and the lifespan of a car will depend heavily on how it’s been serviced. Any car that has been ignored and abused will have a shorter run than the same make and model that has been meticulously maintained and serviced. And this difference can literally be hundreds of thousands of kilometres.

However, it’s also worth keeping in mind that this model Barina was a Daewoo by any other name (and not a particularly good one, at that) and was designed and engineered as such. Even a well maintained example is probably going to be getting pretty long in the tooth by the time 200,000km have been clocked up. Common faults include dramas with the engine and transmission and many owners simply find that the cost of repairs is more than the value of the vehicle itself. At which point they get scrapped and recycled.

Live wires don’t like to be short-circuited which, I’m guessing, is exactly what you’ve done by touching something you shouldn’t have with your screwdriver. The good news is that modern cars have protection against this sort of mishap in the form of fuses and circuit-breakers.

So the first job is to find the fuse or fuses that have blown (sacrificing themselves to protect the rest of the car’s electrical system). These will be identifiable by their broken filament (if you hold them up to the light) but often, finding them is the hardest part.

Some vehicles have their fuse-box located somewhere under the dashboard or in the kick panels and others locate the fuse-box under the bonnet. Many cars have one of each, so take some time with the owner’s manual and find the fuses and then identify the blown ones. With luck, you’ll simply need to replace these fuses with new ones of the correct rating and you should restore everything to working order. Given the scope of the mayhem you’ve created, it’s a fair bet there is more than one fuse involved here.

If the fuses don’t check out, you might also find there’s a fusible link on the positive battery terminal. This can also blow as a defence mechanism but is also easy to replace. If none of that works, it’s off to an auto electrician to find out what you’ve inadvertently fried and what needs to be replaced.

How long the maximum combined outputs of a powertrain last is dependent on several factors, including but not limited to the type of hybrid powertrain (e.g. 'self-charging' or plug-in), the type of internal-combustion engine, the type and number of electric motors, the battery's state of charge, your driving style, gross combined mass and so forth.

In the same way your diesel SUV only produces 570Nm during a range of engine speeds, it's not as simple as saying you have peak towing performance (or otherwise) all the time.

That said, if a hybrid is rated to tow a certain maximum weight, it should be able to do so irrespective of the battery's state of charge, unless otherwise stated by the manufacturer.