Holden Problems

I'm with you, Allan; I much prefer a hardcopy book I can lay out in the engine bay with me while I'm working on a car, rather than an e-book that requires an electronic device to access it.

A quick online search revealed that while the official Holden manual is, indeed, most commonly available as an electronic document, there are plenty of hardcopy workshop manuals from other companies available to buy. Another possibility would be to try a Holden service centre to see if it still sells workshop manuals for its cars. Some public libraries also keep a selection of workshop manual to borrow.

The best place to find workshop manual is a swap meet where some vendors have literally hundreds of titles to choose from. A second-hand workshop manual is not only a great form of recycling, the pages with the most greasy fingerprints will give you a good hint on the major problem areas of the vehicle.

Even if the two cars were from the same production month and year, you’ve got some serious mis-matches there; enough to make the job far more time, effort and money than it’s worth. For a start, the two-wheel-drive Colorado won’t have the extra differential and drive-shafts to mate with the twin drive-shafts that the all-wheel-drive gearbox will have. So you’d have to somehow blank that front driveshaft off. Or, add the front differential and axle which will also probably require different front suspension. Prop-shaft lengths are likely to be different between a manual and an automatic version of the same car, too.

Then there’s all the other things that can suddenly catch you out. In many cases, the manual and automatic versions of a particular car will have different transmission tunnels and different holes in the floor for the shifter to poke through. Even the centre consoles can be non-interchangeable. The dashboard of an automatic car with its PRNDL display will also be different to the manual one. Then there’s the question of wiring looms which can also be vastly different to suit the specific requirements of each driveline layout (a modern automatic needs lots of electrical inputs). In fact, the on-board computer is very likely to be different between the two transmissions on that basis as well.

Following on from that, what about the sensors to control the all-wheel-drive system? Or even the rotary dial inside the car to select the different four-wheel-drive modes? A two-wheel-drive car just won’t have them nor even possibly the access points to add them. And what about the real basics? Things like the automatic car not having a clutch pedal. That requires a full pedal change inside the car. None of this stuff is simple, easy or cheap.

To be honest, the engines themselves are very possibly interchangeable, but even if that’s all you swapped (and not the transmission) you’d still need to change the flywheel and plenty of little details.

By far the best advice is to simply buy the version of the Colorado you want.

It's good news. Your car is indeed compatible with E10 fuel which means you can use the slightly cheaper fuel without risking damage to your vehicle. The car should also run exactly the same as it does on normal unleaded petrol, although you may find you use slightly more fuel per 100km. This should, however, be more than offset by the savings you'll make at the pump.

This model Colorado doesn't have a completely clean rap sheet in terms of its long-term reliability, so I'd definitely want to see a complete service history with no gaps or skipped maintenance. Beyond that, manual-transmission versions of this car didn't like towing and had a small gearbox component that could fail requiring a new gearbox.

But even an automatic version was known to have (in some examples) oil consumption problems (Holden's fix was to fit a different dip-stick to alter owners' perception of the consumption). Other problems included leaking coolant plugs, electrical wiring issues and even water leaks into the cabin.

All that said, the Holden was actually an Isuzu D-Max under the skin; a vehicle that has a better than average record for reliability among its peers.

It would be worth talking tom Consumer Affairs over this one, as well as asking the auto specialist who made the diagnosis whether they thought the problem was a pre-existing condition or not. I know that in most states and territories, second-hand commercial vehicles don't carry a statutory warranty even when bought from a licensed dealer. But the reality is not as simple as no-warranty-bad-luck.

If the vehicle was not fit for purpose (as the legislation quaintly puts it) and the gearbox fault was not disclosed when the purchase was made (if indeed it existed back then) then you may have some recourse in terms of getting the problem fixed or some compensation.

These disputes are looked at strictly on a case-by-case basis, but if the car was already damaged and you were not told about it, nor the price-tag reflected it, then you may have a leg to stand on.

This is something that confounds a lot of car owners. For whatever reason, many cars seem determined to blow their headlight globes at fairly regular intervals. This can be caused by voltage spikes (via a faulty regulator) cheap globes, vibration or moisture in the headlight unit. It's also important when changing globes that you don't touch any part of the glass bulb with your fingers. This can leave dirt or oil on the glass which can then cause a hot spot and lead to early failure.

But sometimes there just seems to be no explanation for the early demise of headlight globes. A more permanent fix is to switch to an LED replacement globe which is expensive (at something like $200 for the globes) but seems to eradicate the problem. Make sure you buy an LED kit that complies with the law on such matters (brightness and colour range) and fit it correctly, but in most cases, it's a simple one-for-one replacement deal.

As an aside, I've seen plenty of headlight globes that have died young and it's always been the low-beam filament that has failed. I'm yet to see a high-beam filament blow first.

Both those models of Holden used the same engine; the L36 (Holden's internal code) Ecotec V6. As such, you should be able to fit the engine from the VT Commodore into the Statesman with very few other changes. The biggest hurdle will be if the Commodore donor car was a manual-transmission vehicle, as the ECU may be different to the Statesman's unit to allow for control of the electronic transmission. The best bet is to retain the Statesman's wiring and computer and change over only the engine hardware from the Commodore.

The other (minor) catch is that the VT's version of the V6 was tuned for 147kW, while the later version of the same engine in the Statesman was good for 152kW. There was a small torque difference, too (304Nm plays 305Nm). So you'll be trading off a small amount of performance but, realistically, not enough to notice.

From what I can gather, the engine in your Barina is an interference design. That is, if the timing belt breaks, the pistons and valves (in the cylinder head) will, indeed, meet head on at speed, turning the engine to junk in a slip-second. So make sure the timing belt is changed every 100,000km to reduce the risk of this happening.

Some engines with timing belts are non-interference designs, meaning that a broken belt will simply allow the pistons and crankshaft to continue to rotate without hitting (or damaging) the valves. Replacing the belt and retiming the engine will return it to full health. You'll still be stranded by the roadside if it happens, of course.

When an engine (petrol or diesel) inhales water through its air-intake system, it's never usually a good outcome. Because water is – as is any liquid – non-compressible, the engine's pistons will try to achieve that but, in the process, the engine will lock up and all sorts of internal carnage can ensue.

If you're lucky, the damage will be fixable but can still involve bent con-rods, broken pistons and bent valves. If the lock up was more severe, there's a chance that the engine block could be cracked or a con-rod has broken and punched a hole through the crankcase. Sometimes the force of the lock up is sufficient to smash the main bearing caps and throw the crankshaft out of place. In any of those latter cases, the whole engine would be considered a total loss.

But even if you've gotten away with a bent con-rod or two, you'd still need to rebuild the entire engine and, in the context of a 2004 Rodeo ute, you might find you're spending more money than the vehicle is actually worth.

A potentially better idea would be to find a good, tested second-hand engine from a wrecking yard or any other sort of damaged Rodeo and do a relatively simple heart transplant.

Most glow-plug systems in diesel cars work on a timer system. The manufacturer will have worked out that X seconds of current will heat the plugs to a temperature sufficient for easy starting, so that X-seconds period is where the timer will be set.

What happens, though, is that glow plugs can lose their efficiency over time (and with 233,000km on board, your car is a candidate for that to have happened). As that efficiency is lost, they don't produce the same amount of heat as they used to and, therefore, the timer isn't giving them long enough to heat the combustion chamber sufficiently. When that happens, the engine becomes hard to start. The other possibility is that the timer itself is faulty and isn't giving the plugs power for long enough. The fact that your engine starts easily after the first cold start of the day, suggests the glow-plugs are, indeed, at fault here.

The other possibility is that the car's electrical system is not sending enough voltage to the glow plugs to make them work properly. This can be verified quickly and easily with a voltmeter. This method can also verify the length of time the timer is supplying power to the plugs.

In vehicles where the timer has already shut off the power to the glow-plugs before enough heat has been generated, the solution is often a new set of glow-plugs. The good news is that these aren't expensive, nor are they difficult to change if you know what you're doing. The caveat is if you aren't sure of what you're doing, at which point the fuel system on a common-rial diesel injection system can be very dangerous to tamper with due to the super-high pressures involved.