Ask The Guide

This is a pretty common problem with older cars: Often the owner’s manual goes missing from the glove-box and the tyre inflation sticker that would once have been attached to the car has either peeled off, become too crazed or faded to read, or painted over after an accident.

Meantime, the answer for your Nissan depends a bit on what type of tyres you’re using. If they’re light truck tyres and using the van as intended, then between 40 and 50psi might be a good starting point. But if you’re using normal car tyres, then between about 32 and 38psi might be better. The other deciding factor is how much load you’re carrying. If you’re loaded heavily or towing, then definitely go up a few psi.

The broad rule is that if the indicator light is a yellow or orange one (check-engine light, low-fuel warning) you should be okay to get the car to a mechanic to have it scanned to see what the problem is. Or to get it to the nearest service-station to put more petrol in it.

But, if the light is a red one (temperature, oil pressure, charging system etc) then you need to stop driving the car right now or risk doing further, permanent damage to it. Pull over somewhere safe and call the cavalry. Continuing to drive with a red warning light on the dashboard is almost a guarantee to damage or destroy something expensive, including the engine.

I’d be taking a long, hard look at the battery. When a battery is at the end of its useful life, it will often show a 12-volt charge with a simple volt-meter check. But, when you turn the key and place a big load on the battery, it goes weak at the knees and won’t turn the engine over.

Have the battery load tested. This will tell you more about what’s going on. The reason the car started with a jump-start form another car is that the second car’s battery has stepped up to do the job your car’s battery can’t.

Yes it does. Clean transmission fluid is critical to an automatic transmission which relies on tiny oil passages and complex hydraulic systems to operate correctly. Without a filter, debris and swarf from the transmission itself could soon block these pathways and cause major problems.

You can buy filter kits online for very reasonable prices, but replacing the filter is only part of a transmission service. A specialist transmission shop can advise you when your car’s gearbox needs its next service, based on kilometres covered and the condition of the fluid inside.

Each radio unit has a different code as a means of preventing them being stolen (or, at least, making them worthless if they were stolen). The best place to start looking for that individual code is inside the owner’s manual. Often, the dealer that sold the car new will have recorded the code, say, on the back of a business card or somewhere inside the manual or its folder, for future reference. And, yes, recording the code somewhere in the glove-box does tend to negate the value of having a secret code in the first place.

If you can’t find the code there, my understanding is that the dealer who sold the car new (information that should also be in the owner’s manual or service handbook) will have a record of all the codes to all the radios in cars sold by them. The catch is that you have to know the serial number of the actual radio before this can be checked. To do that, the radio will need to be removed from the dashboard and the serial number noted.

Any time the brakes (or any other system of a car) start to feel different than they have done since you bought the car, there’s probably something wrong. If it was an older car, I’d suggest a brake fluid change as the first step, but that’s unlikely to be the reason in an almost-new car. The problem sounds like there’s air in the braking system (there should only be brake fluid, and no air) but, again, that’s a wild card in such a new vehicle.

In any case, you’re doing the right thing by having the car independently tested. If the results come back suggesting a problem, you have good ammunition to get the dealership to fix this as a warranty matter. Make sure you get a written report from the mechanic detailing the braking system’s performance, and don’t be afraid to go over the dealer’s head to Subaru Australia’s customer service department.

Kia rates the 2017 Sorento to tow a braked trailer of up to 2000kg. That much weight should be well within the limits of the car’s mechanical systems and reflects testing that Kia would have done before releasing the car. Which is to say, you won’t damage the car by towing a sub-two-tonne caravan.

Provided that is, that the caravan and car are loaded correctly and the rig is balanced and safe. This is also dependent on the vehicle being in perfect condition and you diving it correctly in the context of towing a heavy load.

The automatic transmission is your friend here, too, as it is smart enough to decide what gear it needs to be in to make the engine’s life as easy as possible and avoid unnecessary wear and tear. If you think the engine is labouring at any point, you can also lock the transmission out of overdrive and let the engine breath a little easier.

If the oil is escaping the transfer case on your car, it has to be going somewhere. So, yes, you would expect to see some evidence of the leak where you park the car each night. The thing is the oil may not be directly under the transfer case, as it may have leaked onto a chassis rail or even a cable or brake line and be dripping on to the ground some distance from the case. That said, it might also be right under the transfer case as a big clue to what’s going on.

The costs of fixing the leak would depend on where it’s coming from and how much disassembly is required to get to it. But in reality, leaks like this are covered by your factory warranty, so really, it’s LDV’s problem, not yours.

You may have a damaged or worn transmission that is simply not operating properly in a mechanical sense. But it’s also worth checking the level of the transmission fluid because low fluid is a common cause of this sort of problem. Without sufficient fluid and, therefore pressure and volume, the gearbox can’t operate properly, with symptoms including slurred shifts, transmission slippage, clunky or noisy operation and slow gear selection.

Most of a modern car’s systems are now sealed which means you shouldn’t find any fluids under the car, with one possible exception. And that would be some water from the air-conditioning system. One of the things air-con does is de-humidifies the air passing through it (which is why it’s so good for demisting fogged-up windows). The result of that is that the water from the atmosphere removed by the A/C has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is usually on to the ground via a vent that stops the water collecting inside the cabin. However, this vent is more likely to be located under the dashboard or perhaps under the front seats, not the rear of the vehicle.

Don’t rule out, either, a simple case of rainwater which has collected somewhere along the chassis and drains out when you pull up for the night. Did you drive through a puddle just before parking the car? That could explain the liquid, too.

Given the liquid is clear and has no smell means it probably is water, but make sure you check the levels of everything else on the vehicle and keep an eye on them to make sure you don’t have a problem. And that includes the water reservoir for the windscreen washers.

Meantime, don’t forget that a fluid leak is a warranty issue for Haval to deal with.