Holden Problems

If your diagnosis is correct, the problem will be with the either sensor that detects the temperature of the coolant, the computer that creates the signal to open, the wiring that carries the message or the thermostat itself. An auto electrician should be able to sort this out by testing the components one by one until the dud one reveals itself.

But there’s another possibility in cars like this one with a thermostat that lives in a plastic housing. Over time and repeated heat cycles, the plastic can degrade and fail internally. At that point, the actual thermostat mechanism can move sideways and jam against the housing, effectively preventing it from opening., At that point the engine can overheat. Don’t rule that out until the condition of the housing has been checked.

Just because you can’t see where coolant is escaping, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Equally, a lack of milky oil in the sump does not guarantee that the problem is not a head gasket-related one. Even an external leak from a hose or fitting can be hard to track down as the hot coolant evaporates before you have time to find the witness mark or the coolant drips on the garage floor.

Your best bet is to have the car’s cooling system pressure tested. A mechanic will pressurise the system and leave it for a period of time. If the system holds pressure, that’s a good sign that there’s no leaking. If it loses pressure, you have a problem somewhere in the closed-loop cooling system. That could indicate a problem with a radiator, hose, water pump, head gasket or even a split bore or cracked cylinder head.

But there’s one other check to make that might save you a lot of time and hassle. Takle a close look at the car’s overflow tank. This is also called the expansion tank and is designed to catch coolant as it expands (through engine heat) before allowing that extra coolant to return to the engine as the car cools down at the end of the trip. If this tank is leaking (even from a tiny crack) coolant that expands into it will be lost and the cooling system will appear to be continually losing coolant.

I believe the part number you need is GM96683849. That’s what shows up for the 2003 Cruze, anyway. But if you can’t find one, then maybe try a Suzuki parts specialist. Because the Cruze was heavily based on the Suzuki Ignis of the time, there’s a good chance the clutch cables will be interchangeable.

If you still can’t locate one, there are specialist businesses out there that can make you a clutch cable to any specification from scratch. This might be more expensive, but if it keeps you on the road, then it’s worth the extra. By the way, the cable for your Cruze, through a parts store, shouldn’t cost more than $100.

Plenty of owners of this make and model have experienced similar frustrations with the rotary dial not selecting two- and four-wheel-drive promptly and accurately. It’s possibly down to a switch (the rotary dial itself) that has developed wear or play in its mechanism and simply isn’t as accurate as it once was. But it’s also worth checking the electronics that control the shift function, as a glitch might have the system trying to select something other than what’s showing on the dial.

This is a classic case of electronics taking over a mechanical function (early 4WDs had a simple, mechanical lever to switch between two and four-wheel-drive) and not being as good at it. This function, when you think about it, is an incredibly important one for this type of vehicle and might mean the difference between getting out of a bog-hole and not. Many owners would welcome the return of the purely mechanical lever, but that’s not the direction car design is travelling.

You could have an engine problem that is causing the vehicle to lose power. The cause of this could literally be a thousand different things. An electronic scan of the vehicle might shed some light on the root cause of the problem, and most mechanics would carry out such a scan before doing anything else.

If the engine is not at fault, you might find the problem can be traced to a transmission that is not shifting gear properly or is slipping, or perhaps even something as simple as a dragging brake or poorly adjusted park-brake. But before you hit the workshop, you can check simple things like the condition of the engine’s air filter to make sure there’s no obvious cause. If your car is a turbocharged model, check the plastic trunking that carries the boost from the turbo to the engine’s intake. This trunking can split or fall off, leading to a loss of boost pressure and, therefore, performance.

A common cause of overheating can be a failed head gasket which allows the coolant to be consumed by the engine. When this happens, soon there’s not enough coolant remaining to cool the engine and the car overheats.

But it may not be as serious as that. You could simply have a stuck thermostat. This is the component that prevents coolant flowing around the engine when it’s first started, forcing the engine to warm up faster. Then, as the engine gets warmer, the thermostat starts to open to allow the coolant to flow through the engine and do its job, maintaining the correct running temperature in the process.

Other possible causes for overheating include incorrect ignition timing, a slipping fan belt, non-functioning cooling fans, a collapsed radiator hose, blocked radiator, a worn water pump and many others. A good mechanic should be able to make a diagnosis and tackle the problem from there.

The fact that the scan doesn’t throw up a fault code could be an indication that it’s something pretty fundamental at fault here. Have you checked the car’s earth points and the tightness and cleanliness of the battery terminals? Apparently simple things like this can easily cause a random misfire. How is the condition of the battery and the charging rate? Modern engines hate low operating voltages.

But don’t rule out a problem with the fuel system, either. You might have a faulty fuel pump or a dirty fuel filter or even a dud injector that’s causing the glitch. Don’t forget to check the wiring to these components, either as a simple loose wire could be the problem.

If you do need to dig deeper, you could try checking the engine’s compression and the clearances of the engine valves. Even something like a cracked cylinder head or faulty head gasket can cause a misfire that shows up at, say, a particular engine temperature, but not at other times.

It’s certainly strange behaviour and your theory that because it works perfectly some of the time, it’s probably not terminal is a decent one. If something internal was broken or worn out, the transmission wouldn’t work at all. Which leads any mechanic to suspect you have either a gear selection problem or an electrical glitch.

Scan the car electronically to see if any fault codes are thrown up. But also check for things like bad earths or blown fuses and relays. You can’t rule out a major internal failure until you get inside the gearbox itself, but starting with these simple things can help eliminate other possibilities. You may find the ECU (the computer than controls the driveline) is the culprit, and is having random melt-downs.

For a start, you might find it’s neither of those things causing the noise. You may have a worn tyre, poor wheel alignment or a faulty brake, to name just a few possibilities. That said, both your suspects are likely contributors to this type of noise.

In any case, there’s a simple way to tell whether a noise is coming from the driveline (engine and transmission) or from one of the wheel bearings. Drive the car at whatever speed is necessary to make the noise appear. If it gets louder as you apply throttle, there’s a good chance it’s driveline related.

But now, with the car still making the offending noise, drop the transmission into neutral (where it’s safe to do so, of course) and let the vehicle coast. This takes all the stress off the driveline and the engine should return to idle. If the noise is still present, then you have a wheel bearing or other problem linked to the wheels, brakes or axles, but not the engine or gearbox.

This is actually quite normal and nothing to be concerned about. If the engine temperature is high enough, the computer will continue to run the cooling fan even though the ignition has been turned off. This helps keep the temperature from spiking when the vehicle stops and is turned off.

Even though this only really lowers the temperature of the coolant in the radiator (not in the actual engine) it also helps to maintain a constant, safe temperature if you restart the car soon after shutting it down.

That said, the fan should only continue running for a couple of minutes at most after you’ve turned the car off. Any longer and you might have a problem with the circuits that power and control the electric fan.