Holden Problems

By my reckoning it would take you around three years to recoup the cost. That's based on an installation cost of $4500 before the government grant of $1500, and regular unleaded petrol costing $1.40 and LPG 60 cents per litre.

There would still seem to be a problem with the crank angle sensor. The symptoms suggest it, and the diagnostics back it up. Having replaced the sensor without solving the problem you need to look at things like the connector and the wiring that leads to the sensor.

No, Holden can't void your warranty should you use another service agent; just make sure they are going to do the logbook service as they claim.

Everything has a statutory guarantee with it that covers the goods as sold. That you installed the engine yourself shouldn’t have any bearing on the guarantee, unless it can be shown that you have done something to cause the fault. In your case it would seem that is not the situation and the problem is with the engine as supplied by Holden.

The price range quoted by the trade is $6500-$8500, but that assumes normal use and many more kays than your car has done. Yours should be worth more than that, but it’s hard to say how much. In my view the VT II is not yet a valued classic, more an old used car, so there’s not yet the demand for it from the classic car market. But anyone wanting to get in on the ground floor and buy a classic to put aside until the market comes around would be well to pay a little over the odds now. Yours could be worth up to $12,000 to the right person.

It is not unusual for the battery to be placed in the boot; some carmakers have been doing that for many years. You might notice that it's often placed there in race cars for weight distribution reasons, to get more weight over the rear wheels, but in regular passenger cars it's mostly done for packaging reasons. One look at the engine bay of most cars today is enough to know that it's a pretty crowded place, and putting the battery in the boot alleviates that problem.

If it hasn’t been changed already I would change it now that it is going on six years old.

It's a little higher than I would expect, but roof racks and bikes carriers would have an adverse effect of the fuel consumption, and it would be even more affected by carrying bikes.

The official fuel economy figure for your car is 8.8 L/100 km, which does suggest that there is something wrong with it. While the official figure is from a dynamometer test done in a laboratory and not necessarily representative of real life, it shouldn't be a long way off the mark as it seems it is in this case. Talk to the dealer and express your concerns to them and ask that they recheck your car and work out a course of action that will identify the cause of the problem, and consider going all the way back to Holden if necessary to get a resolution.

I’m not a fan of these systems; I don’t believe they have been properly developed to a point where they are reliable. They work by substituting LPG for diesel and can damage engine if the amount of LPG is not properly controlled.