Chery Problems

Cars don’t like to sit around for long periods. When they do, they often develop problems in the process, with everything from running problems to flat-spotted tyres and mould growing inside them.

When you say the car doesn’t want to start, does that mean it turns over when you turn the key, or that nothing at all happens? If it’s the latter, the battery is probably flat or completely dead and will need to be recharged or replaced depending on its condition. If the engine turns but doesn’t fire, you might have a tank full of stale fuel that will need to be drained and replaced. Modern fuel goes stale pretty quickly and can also foul spark plugs, making the engine hard or even impossible to start.

A full service with fresh oil, spark plugs, fuel and filters might do the trick and is a good idea for any vehicle that has been sitting around for a while.

Hold down your trip meter button of your Chery J3 while turning the ignition key (but don't start the car). Hold down the trip meter button for 10 seconds, then turn the ignition key off.

The spanner light should not be on when you next switch the car on.

Try a Chery dealer. If that’s not possible an auto electrician should be able to help.

The Omoda 5 is produced by Chinese automaker Chery, and is produced in China, Malaysia and Iran. Australia examples are built in China. 

In the old days, you’d probably be on the right track, but as a more modern car, your Chery doesn’t have a carburettor, it has electronic fuel-injection. But the symptoms align pretty neatly with a very common problem for fuel-injected cars; an electric fuel pump that has given up the ghost.

When that happens, there’s no way for the fuel to get from the tank to the engine and, as a result, the car simply won’t start. Pumps can fail suddenly and for no apparent reason, leaving you stranded where ever you happen to be.

I’d say about ten years is a pretty good innings for a fuel pump, so that’s where I’d start looking. Try this: When you turn the ignition on, you should be able to hear a faint buzz or hum as the pump starts taking petrol to the engine. If there’s no such noise, that’s another clue that the pump has died.

Of course, it could be something else – electrical, perhaps a fuse – but the fuel pump is a great place to start searching for the cause.

This is the vehicle trying to tell you that the oil level in the engine is low and needs to be topped up to prevent damage to the engine. The engine has a sensor that is triggered when the oil level drops below a pre-determined level, at which point the oil level is not quite low enough to cause damage. If it continues to fall, however, that will change. So don’t drive the car any farther until the oil has been topped up.

By the way, all engines use some oil; it’s a normal part of the way an engine works. Some modern engines with low-friction internals will use a little more oil than some older engine designs, too, and this can catch some people out. But don’t panic, because this is one of the ways a modern engine saves fuel.

What you need to be aware of is how much oil the engine consumes as normal, and make sure that doesn’t start to increase which would indicate engine wear is occurring. For reference, the grade of oil you need to buy for a top-up in your Chery is a 10W50 fully synthetic.

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.

Both the Toyota and Kia have good reputations for quality and durability, while the Chery is more of an unknown quantity in Australia. The important thing to remember is that the cars you’ve short-listed are all near-new vehicles, so they’ll have plenty of factory warranty left to run.

The best way to avoid clear coat peeling is to buy a car in a solid, rather than metallic, colour, which doesn’t generally have the same peeling problems. That said, modern paint technology is much better than ever before, so this is less of a problem than it once was. Protecting a car’s interior means parking it out of the sun in the hotter months. Although, again, the durability of interior plastics has come a long, long way in recent years.

If you’re going to keep the car for a few years and then trade it in on a new car, retained value is more important than any of your other concerns. And in that sense, the Toyota traditionally moves to the front of the pack.