Holden Captiva Problems

Mid or medium-sized SUV buyers are absolutely spoiled for choice right now. Pretty much eery car-maker form the budget brands to the high-end marques has a range of SUVs in a size to suit anybody.

Many have very frugal turbo-diesel engines but, for many owners out there, the petrol variant is the one that makes most sense. And even if you’re not worried about fuel consumption, the planet will be pleased to know that most modern SUVs are actually very frugal at the pump compared with their counterparts of just a few years ago, your Captiva included.

If your priorities are reliability and running costs, then maybe a visit to a Hyundai or Kia dealership might be in order. Both brands have plenty of SUVs to choose from, including diesel, petrol, hybrid and even electric versions thereof. They both also offer an industry-leading factory warranty, and capped-price servicing is another big selling point.

I’m not sure what your experience has been with your Captiva, but if you’ve had a similar run with that of many, many owners, just about any new SUV will be more reliable than the Holden.

A check-engine light in a car like a Captiva can mean all sorts of things. Everything from a stretched timing chain (quite likely in this vehicle) to a dud oxygen sensor in the exhaust system (and about a million things in between) can cause the engine light to flicker on ominously.

The best advice is to have the car scanned electronically. That way, the scanning computer will 'talk’ to the car’s computer and the car should offer up any faults it has logged in the process of being driven.

You’re better off not driving the car until it can be scanned and fixed, as the problem causing the engine light to come on could easily get worse and may eventually damage other components. If it is something like a stretched timing chain that is causing the warning light, it could eventually break and reduce the whole engine to scrap.

DPF additives are real thing right now as consumers run scared over the thought of their car’s DPF needing replacement. These additives use a catalyst that claims to help clean out the DPF and regenerate it, usually by lowering the temperature at which the soot will be burned off in the filter.

Perhaps some do, but just as surely some of these will be snake oil. Choose a known brand and be prepared for the experiment to be a complete dud. Expect to pay about $30 for a bottle of additive, too, so it’s not a cheap experiment.

You can try either the type of additive that is simply poured into the fuel tank when you refuel next, or the type that is sprayed into the air intake system with the engine running. Either way, these are probably best regarded as a preventative measure and the servicing industry seems pretty doubtful about the additives’ ability to clean a DPF that is already blocked.

A lot of modern cars don’t feature a drain-plug for the fuel tank. That’s a bit annoying to old-school mechanics, but it does make for a stronger, more leak-proof tank in the case of a modern plastic fuel tank as fitted to so many cars these days.

Most mechanics faced with this will either remove the tank and tip it upside-down to remove the offending contents, but there is a simpler way if you know what you’re doing. That is to disconnect the fuel feed line from the tank to the engine at the engine end, and then simply turn on the ignition and have the electric fuel pump empty the contents into a safe container. This will take several minutes, depending on how full the tank is to start with.

As second-hand buys go, the Holden Captiva is a no-go zone. These were not reliable cars when they were new and the years and kilometres since have only made that situation worse. The V6 petrol engine is prone to stretched timing chains which is a huge and expensive job to fix and the automatic transmission is also a turkey. The Captiva was also home to many an oil leak and electrical problems are common.

These are now cheap cars, but for a very good reason. But even a car that is cheap to buy can wind up costing you lots if you need to constantly repair it. There are plenty of far better alternatives.

Doing your own oil changes is a great way to learn a bit about how cars work and develop a relationship with your car. You might even save a few dollars, too, but there are caveats.

The actual act of changing the oil is relatively simple and requires just a couple of hand tools. Basically, you drain the old oil out of the engine via the sump-plug, remove the old oil filter, replace it with a new one and then add fresh oil via the filler cap on top of the engine. If that sounds simple, that’s because that is a very crude, thumbnail sketch of the procedure, but it does cover the basics. Whether you feel confident enough to take the plunge is the next question. A workshop manual is a great investment and will be invaluable down the track.

But other things to consider include the fact that a service is often not just an oil change. There are many other things (transmission, brakes, cooling system etc) to be checked and adjusted at the same time as a scheduled oil change, so doing it all at home requires a reasonably broad idea of what’s going on mechanically. Your service handbook should spell out what tasks are specified for each service (each service is not all the same, either, some are more complex than what’s called a minor service) so that would be a good place to start.

Don’t forget, too, that the old oil and filter has to be disposed of in an environmentally responsible way, something that a professional workshop service takes care of for you. But there’s definitely satisfaction to be gained from this maintenance job and it’s absolutely the best place to start learning.

Regardless of whether you use an additive, a car’s Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) will still need to be cleaned (or regenerated) periodically as soot builds up in it. Short trips where the engine doesn’t get a chance to warm up properly, as well as extended periods of idling in traffic and stop-start running will all hasten this requirement.

In the case of the Captiva diesel, the best way to manually force a regeneration is to put aside an hour and go for a decent drive. The advice from Holden in the day was to travel at more than 50km/h and at more than 2000rpm (which may mean locking the car out of overdrive) for a minimum of 25 minutes. During this process, you should not allow the speed or revs to fall below those two figures which suggests finding a decent strip of freeway to carry out this process. You should also not turn off the engine at any point in this procedure. The broad idea is to get the engine and exhaust hot enough for the filter to regenerate and clean itself.

If, after 100km of this type of treatment, the DPF light on the dashboard hasn’t disappeared, the solution is a trip to a workshop to have the filter investigated and, potentially, hand-cleaned. Experience suggests a couple of attempts may be needed to get this to happen as it should, and in fact, the car’s computer will give you several chances to produce the desired effect before the workshop beckons.

Unfortunately, you’re right; this model Holden Captiva has a terrible reputation and failing transmission are right at the top of that list. Holden recognised the problem to an extent and extended the factory cover on the transmission to 150,000km or five years from the date the vehicle entered service. That was up from the three-year/100,000km standard warranty that your car was sold with. But since your car is a 2012 model and has likely been on the road for the last eight or nine years, that’s of very little use to you.

I agree that a car with 64,000km should not need a new transmission and, if it does, the manufacturer should be helping out. But now that Holden as a brand is extinct, even finding somebody to talk to might be a battle. That said, Holden is legally required to stick around to take care of warranty claims, honour its scheduled servicing schemes, provide spare parts and service and attend to any safety recalls. That also means it still has a customer service division which you can reach by phoning 1800 46 465 336. It’s a long shot, but who knows.

The Holden Captiva’s problems started with the fact that it was a Daewoo with a Holden badge. Reliability was poor and build quality just as bad and, as a result, the car soon developed a reputation for being more trouble than it was worth. That view among many owners didn’t change as the car aged, either.

Common problems were timing chain failures in V6 versions, oil leaks and engine troubles in both diesel and petrol form, camshaft problems, diesel particulate Filter (DPF) failures and a range of random electrical and electronic dramas. Transmission failures are also not unknown but this was hardly the Captiva’s worst flaw. Fundamentally, the Captiva was a very ordinary car and not one that most buyers would be prepared to take on now that the true extent of its problems have been dissected by the trade.

Because the central locking system in your Captiva has been designed specifically for that car, it’s unlikely there would be a workable aftermarket solution. Which means you either need to hope that Holden still sells these parts or that you can find a system pulled from a wrecked Captiva.

We have seen 'universal' central locking kits advertised, but they all require a fair bit of fiddling and modifying to get them to fit and work properly. In any case, it’s possible that only one part of the system in your car is giving trouble, as opposed to the whole locking system. In turn, that means that you might be able to get away with just replacing that faulty part. The remote-control key-fob unit, for instance, can be replaced relatively cheaply.

Bear in mind the Holden Captiva has a terrible track record in terms of its electrical fittings and fixtures, including the body computer which controls many functions including the central locking. If the body computer is the problem, you might find that the cost of repairs will outweigh the car’s actual market value.