Holden Problems

The engine in your Combo has a code-name C14NZ (for future reference). This 1.4-litre four-cylinder unit has an engine oil capacity of 3.5 litres which includes the little extra oil required when you’re changing the oil filter as well as the engine oil.

For the record, changing the filter every time you change the oil is best practice. While some mechanics reckon a filter change is only required every second oil change, the vast majority of tradespeople recommend a filter change with every oil change. Why put clean oil through a dirty filter, is the basic argument.

If you’re planning to do an oil change yourself, make sure you buy a four or even five-litre container of oil as this will allow you to carry out the oil change as well as having some oil left over for top-ups between services.

A lot of workshops that aren’t too familiar with a certain make and model will often neglect this little detail, mainly because they either forget or don’t know how to cancel it. The good news, it’s a pretty simple procedure.

Switch the ignition on but don’t start the engine. Then, press the little black button inside the tachometer (just above the 'RPM' symbol) until the oil-can symbol appears. Then, hold the same button for a few seconds until you hear a beep and the number next to the oil can changes to 100 (per cent). That’s it, you’re done.

A cracked turbocharger intake pipe is a pretty common problem as this tubing has to withstand high temperatures and the force of the turbo’s boost. You really wouldn’t bother trying to fix this, and a replacement piece of tubing is the proper fix.

Just make sure you get the right piece of tubing as there are different pipes of different shapes that run between the turbocharger and intercooler, and the intercooler and the engine. It’s quite possible to change these yourself, but modern engine bays can be pretty tight and you might find it’s a fiddlier job than you imagined.

While you’re in there, check the condition of the clamps that secure the tubing, too. You may wish to replace them at the same time. I’ve seen replacement pipe kits for anywhere from $200 to $300 for this make and model. Online sellers are plentiful, but conventional parts stores should also be able to help you out.

Yes, like the vast majority of dual-cab utes sold in Australia, the Holden Rodeo was indeed built in Thailand, at the Isuzu plant (the Rodeo was an Isuzu D-Max under the skin apart from the petrol V6 version which used a Holden-made engine). But diesel Rodeos used the Isuzu 4JJ1 four-cylinder diesel which used a timing chain rather than a rubber toothed timing belt. As such, the chain should be good for the life of the engine.

What you haven’t told me is whether your car is a petrol or diesel Captiva. The two engines have very different ways of operating and both can make very different noises depending on what’s going on with them.

Diesel engines often have a fair bit of fuel pump noise which can increase as the car travels more kilometres and the pump develops a bit of wear. But whichever engine we’re dealing with, if the noise is at idle, then you’d really want to check the engine’s oil pressure. Oil pressure is lowest at idle, and low oil pressure can cause noises from the hydraulic lifters and even the engine’s crankshaft and pistons. Neither of those are what you want to hear, though, as they suggests some fairly major internal wear or damage.

What make you think it’s the MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor? If you’ve simply googled the symptoms and found a forum that suggests the MAF sensor, be very careful. These forums are not universally populated by people who have the first idea of what they’re talking about. True, some forums are great and wise, but simply pulling an answer out of a hat without even seeing the car is a road to nowhere in many cases.

It's also why the advice we’d have to give is to have the car looked at by a professional who will probably start by electronically scanning the car to see what fault codes have been logged by the computer. It’s possible the MAF sensor is, indeed, the problem, but it could also be about a thousand other things that need to be ruled out before you start spending money on new parts that may or may not solve your problem. The fact is, these symptoms could be anything from a dud spark plug to a loose wire, either of which would cost a lot less to fix than fitting a new MAF sensor.

There’s a very real chance that in getting the headlight globe out and a new one in, you’ve somehow managed to bump the indicator light fitting and, perhaps, dislodged a wire or displaced an earthing point. The lights on the Captiva are housed in a cluster, so it can be a bit tight for space in there.

So give the indicator globe a wiggle and see if that restores things. If not, you need to look a bit deeper and start checking fuses. But if the rest of the indicators are working properly, it’s most likely that you’ve knocked a wire off or something similar. Either that or the indicator globe has chosen that exact moment to blow. It sounds unlikely, but it’s definitely possible.

Definitely, and what you’re doing is exercising what’s called mechanical sympathy, and it’s a dying art, I’m afraid.

When you consider the forces involved in shifting a car from Neutral to Drive or Reverse, it’s easy to understand that doing so while the engine is revving higher than idle is asking for trouble. Extra revs mean extra forces on all those hydraulic and mechanical bits that make up an automatic transmission. It’s a bit like the difference between taking off normally in a manual car versus revving the engine up and dumping the clutch to make a fast getaway. Yes, it will leave the green light faster, but you’ve just multiplied all the forces trying to tear the transmission apart.

A slightly higher idle shouldn’t make much difference, but the golden rule is to only ever select a gear when the engine is idling at its normal rpm. The good news is that modern engine management means a cold-started engine should only idle higher for handful of seconds, meaning you don’t have to wait long before selecting your gear and taking off.

By the way, a healthy transmission shouldn’t clunk into gear either; the gear-selection process should be swift and all but silent.

It sounds like there’s some kind of problem with the way you have the wiring loom hooked up. One wire in the wrong spot can cause all sorts of mayhem, even in an older car like yours with its relatively wimple wiring. Grab a circuit diagram and try to find out which wire is connected to the wrong terminal.

The other possibility is that the actual light switch has failed internally, allowing the wrong wires to contact each other, or causing them to fail to connect altogether. If you can’t figure it out, it should be a fairly simple and quick fix for an auto electrician to sort.

I’m not sure about other markets around the world, but the Barina Spark sold in Australia between 2010 and 2015 was a five-door hatchback. That is; it had four doors and a lift-up tailgate (hatchback) that is considered the fifth door.

At first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Spark is, in fact, a three-door car, but that’s because the South Korean designers (the car is actually a Daewoo with Holden badges) styled it to look that way by hiding the rear door handles high up in the car’s C-pillar. So until you look carefully and spot the rear handles, it could pass as a three-door. The idea is that it looks like a sporty three-door but has the practicality of a five-door.