Great Wall Problems

Parts and service supply has been a bit of an ongoing problem for some owners of these earlier Chinese-made Great Wall commercial vehicles. Some were sidelined for extended periods after some service parts were hard to locate and it’s doubtful that Covid and its attendant supply-chain problems have helped in that regard.

I’m a bit surprised, however, to learn that a Great Wall dealership lacks the tools and techniques necessary to carry out just about any maintenance task, including electrical jobs. Perhaps a call to Great Wall’s Australian customer service number might do the trick. If your nearest dealers don’t have the necessary equipment, perhaps there’s another dealer a little farther away that does. Failing that, try one of the many online forums for a solution. Chances are your vehicle won’t be the only one with this specific problem, and other owners may be able to offer advice on who can carry out the work.

Oil filter part numbers differ according to which brand your use. But in the case of the most widely known brand, Ryco, the engine in your Great Wall will use an oil filter with part number Z516. If you use an AC Delco oil filter, the part number is AC084. Other brands can be cross-referenced (with the part numbers listed above) online at a variety of websites or in the parts manuals kept by automotive parts stores.

It’s possible that your car has a windscreen that was manufactured with this defect. In some cases, automotive glass can either be manufactured with a lamination fault or can delaminate sometime after that due to a variety of factors.

It could also be that you’re dealing with a windscreen that has been damaged by flying debris. This can be caused when the vehicle is transported from the docks or warehouse to a dealership on the back of a truck. If the debris was the right size, it could virtually `sand-blast’ the windscreen, leading to the problem you’re seeing in particular lighting conditions. You might have noticed cars being transported by truck where the new vehicle at the front of the semi-trailer will have its glass taped over. This is why.

The first step is to have a windscreen specialist look at the vehicle to determine what the problem is. If it’s a manufacturing or transporting fault, you should be covered by the vehicle’s new-car warranty.

There are a couple of alarm bells being set off here. The first is that the engine, if driven through water deep enough, may have ingested some of that water which has caused what’s called hydraulic-lock. This is usually terminal and involves the (non-compressible) water, bending or breaking the engine’s internal bits and pieces such as the crankshaft and connecting rods. If the engine won’t turn over at all, this could be why.

The second possibility is a little less scary and involves the flood-waters entering a part of the car’s electronic or ignition systems, leading to a short-circuit. If that’s the case, the parts can sometimes be dried out and the engine will restart. In modern cars, however, once the computers and other electronics have been wet, they corrode internally and will need to be replaced over time.

This is part of the reason that insurance companies tend to write off flood-damaged cars, even if there’s no other damage. Insurers know that a car that has been under water will come back to haunt them in the longer term as all sorts of electronically-controlled components go belly up.

If you mean that the engine refuses to be turned over either by the starter motor or by physically pushing the vehicle in gear and then letting out the clutch, then there’s potentially something seriously wrong. As in a seized engine. Has it been overheated? Has it been run without oil? Both those things can seize an engine to the point where it is locked solid.

You stand to do more damage by persisting with this, so the smart move would be to present the vehicle at a Great Wall dealership as your Steed is still well and truly covered by the five-year factory warranty (assuming it has a complete service record and hasn’t travelled more than 150,000km. I can see that you’re from the Northern Territory, so perhaps the nearest dealership is a long way away, but if the drivetrain doesn’t want to turn at all, then a dealer is the solution.

If, however, you mean that the engine won’t fire up (but is physically turning over) even after push-starting the vehicle, then the problem might not be so catastrophic. A modern engine needs the correct input signal from literally dozens of sensors before it will run properly (or at all), and if you have a single dud sensor, that could produce the no-start condition you’re seeing.

But here’s the first thing to try: Turn the ignition on and listen for the faint buzzing sound of the electric fuel pump. If you can’t hear it, chances are the pump has failed. It’s very common and one of the typical ways fuel-injected vehicles cease to function. Even so, in a vehicle so young, involving the Great Wall dealership network should be your first step.

A common cause of this fault is failure of what’s known as the clock-spring which lives inside the steering column. But it’s not a spring at all, it’s actually the electrical connector that joins the air-bag (and steering wheel controls if your car has them) to the rest of the car’s electrical systems. It’s called a clock-spring because it’s wound in a spiral shape to allow the steering wheel to turn from lock to lock without the connecting wiring binding or bunching up. Eventually, fatigue gets the better of a clock-spring and it snaps, allowing the connection to fail. And that’s very probably what’s causing the air-bag light on your dashboard.

But don’t ignore it, as the clock-spring is also responsible for sending the correct signal to the air-bag in the case of a crash where the bag needs to deploy. And driving with an air-bag that may not go off when it should is a terrible idea.

A fault with the fuel supply can certainly strand a vehicle in its tracks, but there are a thousand other things that could be causing your problem. It would be worth checking the operation of the fuel system, though, as this is a common problem with modern turbo-diesels. Has the vehicle been run out of fuel recently? That can cause all sorts of knock-on problems when you try to restart the engine. Contaminated fuel (often containing water which modern diesels hate) can also cause this sort of problem. A properly equipped workshop should be able to carry out an electronic scan of the vehicle’s systems and diagnose quickly and efficiently what the problem is.

These cars have a pretty terrible reputation of reliability over the longer term. Plenty of things seem to go wrong with them (almost certainly thanks to them being built down to a price) and parts supply seems a bit sketchy at times, too.

A loose gearshift mechanism can certainly cause the problems you’re experiencing and a loose, or sloppy gear-stick can be the first symptom. Often it’s a simple case of adjusting the selector mechanism, other times you may need to replace a worn bush or bearing to restore the shifter to its original state. But if the shifter is worn or damaged, then selecting gears can become the problem you’re experiencing.

You’re in a bit of a spot here, Rod, because you want vehicle that can handle beach driving every now and then (so, a four-wheel-drive) but one that will spend the bulk of its time in an urban setting. That means a vehicle with a diesel engine is not your ideal solution, yet the vast majority of four-wheel-drive utes are, indeed, diesel powered.

Diesel is a problem for folks like you because modern diesel engines don’t appreciate being used for short, urban journeys. The fact is, these modern diesels are fitted with diesel particulate filters (DPFs) which aim to clean up the tailpipe emissions. That’s fair enough, but when driven in an urban environment without a good run at highway speeds every few weeks, the DPF can clog up and that’s when the problems – and repairs costs – start.

Beyond that, a diesel can easily cost more to service and maintain over the long term, even if it gets more kilometres per tank than a petrol. You might just find that, in an overall sense, the diesel will be costlier to own and run.

Perhaps a better alternative for you is an SUV with a petrol engine and all-wheel-drive. These won’t have the low-ratios of a four-wheel-drive ute for heavy-duty off-roading, but they should be able to handle loose surfaces like a sandy track down to a fishing spot. The catch is that if you do get an SUV stuck on the beach, you won’t get much sympathy for taking the vehicle out of its depth (literally). Perhaps an older four-wheel-drive with a petrol engine would be your best bet. Look at vehicles like a 2015 to 2017 Toyota HiLux ute which was available with four-wheel-drive and a very handy four-litre petrol V6 engine. That way, you’ll get both the driveline and the engine that best matches your requirements.

The most likely answer is that the body computer on your car has a problem. This computer is the one that links all the various functions (and the driveline) to each other, including cruise-control, the instrumentation, lighting, power-windows and, of course, the central-locking.

If the problem is deep within the computer’s circuit-board, you may need to swap it for a new one. But before you spend any money, try this: Close all the doors and then hold the lock button down on the remote. Hold it for at least 30 seconds and then see if the central-locking is behaving. If that fails, try disconnecting the battery and leaving the car for at least an hour. What you’re trying to do is manually force the body computer to re-set itself. This process doesn’t work with all cars, but it does on some and who knows, you might just be lucky.