Holden Problems

Going back to first principles, anywhere that a power wire that should be insulated is allowed to touch an earthed part of the car is a potential source of a short circuit. As such, there are about a million places where a wire or cable carrying 12 volts from the battery could be shorting out by touching an earthed part of the car.

Typical sites of a short-circuit include anywhere where a wire runs through a metal bulkhead (say, from the car’s interior to its engine bay) anywhere a wire is continually flexing (the wiring inside a door jamb where it passes through the body) a switch of any sort or anywhere else where friction could have worn away the wire’s insulation. Sometimes the insulation just gets old and falls off the wire (Mercedes-Benz cars from the mid-90s were notorious for this).

The clue will be in what components have suddenly stopped working. Checking the fuse box to see what fuses have blown in response to the short circuit is also a good indicator or where to start looking. If you suspect the short-circuit is at the battery itself, there will be no need for forensic investigation; a short at the battery will produce a violent spark and lots of smoke. Unless, of course, the car is fitted with a great safety feature called a circuit breaker on or near the positive battery terminal. If you’ve suddenly lost all power to the car, that’s where to start looking.

Finally, don’t assume that a loss of power to the car or some of its components is due to a short circuit. Sometimes a fuse can simply fail for no good reason and call a halt to play. If you’re unsure, an auto electrician can work miracles that the rest of us cannot generally fully comprehend.

This generation of Holden engines was prone to failure of the crankcase ventilation valve (PCV). When it failed, it caused a vacuum leak in the engine that could easily cause rough running and hard starting. It would also possibly trigger a check-engine light.

Depending on the model and year of the car, you might be able to fit a replacement PCV, but sometimes the solution was to replace the entire rocker cover assembly, which included the valve in question. In many cases, the valve failure was accompanied by a failed rocker cover gasket that leaked oil on to the spark plugs, making the car run even more erratically. Don’t be tempted to try a second-hand PCV from a wrecked Barina. The chances are every high that it’s PCV will be trashed, too.

You might find you have two separate problems here. The plastic clip is one thing, but there’s no way a passenger seat would be locked into place with a plastic component. It will almost certainly involve a metal ring or clasp mounted to the floor around which the locking mechanism on the seat locks.

Here’s a possibility, though: perhaps the broken piece of plastic from the broken clip has somehow managed to work its way into the seat locking mechanism and is not allowing the seat to fully clamp into position. Fold the seat up and have a good look around at the clamps or locking rings in the floor. Even if it’s not the errant piece of plastic, you might find a build up of dust or mud is not allowing the seat to find its locked position.

The other chance is that the locking mechanism has somehow closed onto itself before it has found the locking ring. If that’s the case, you may be able to take a screwdriver and pry the lock open before trying to lock the seat back into place. Be careful, however, as these locking mechanisms are often spring loaded and will crush a finger placed in the wrong spot.

This sounds like a fairly simple case of the engine setting up a harmonic vibration through the car. It’s not an uncommon thing and diesels are worse than petrol engines purely because they vibrate more, particularly at idle. By revving the engine slightly, you’re changing the frequency of the engine’s vibrations and moving them out of synch with what’s called the 'natural frequency’ of the rest of the car.

Why does it manifest at the steering column? Because the column is a long, flexible (in a micro sense) shaft that is far more prone to picking up vibrations than a short, more solid part of the car. Why is it happening now all of a sudden? Probably because there’s some wear in the car somewhere. Your call to change the engine mounts was a good one as these can wear and cause this very problem. But, equally, the wear could be in the exhaust system or one of the points where it attaches to the car, a heat shield, the torque converter, or maybe even a piece of the car’s sheet metal that has come loose and is moving slightly.

The quickest fix is to bump the idle one or two hundred rpm and see if that moves the engine out of the vibration zone at idle.

Most mechanics would go back to basics for this one. With the engine running, you place the leads of a volt-meter across the terminals of the battery. This will tell you how much power the alternator is putting into the battery to keep the latter charged. You want to see a figure of up to about 14.5 volts, and anything less than about 13 volts suggests the alternator is struggling.

If you get a low reading, try the test with the engine just off idle as this can sometimes wake the alternator up and get it pulling its weight. Don’t forget to do the test with all the lights ad stereo off, and the air-conditioning switched off, too.

You could have a fault with the car’s wiring. The starter-motor takes its power from the fat, red and black leads that attach to the battery, but it also needs a low-voltage signal from the ignition key that tells it to do its thing. If there’s any sort of loose or missing wire, you might not be making the necessary electrical connections. You could also find that there’s an on-board security system that is blocking the starter-motor from turning. You could even find that the ignition key has a flat battery and is not unlocking the car’s on-board computer.

You say that the battery has voltage, but I wonder how you checked this. You can often put a multimeter across the battery terminals and see 12 volts, but this can be what’s called a surface charge that’s strong enough to light up the dashboard, but then disappears when you put the battery under load (by trying to start the car). Attach the multimeter and check the voltage while actually trying to start the engine. You may find you have a dead battery after all.

Many cars will give a beep if they think the car has been locked with a door, bonnet, boot or window open, even slightly. But if you’re checked all that and everything is secure, the first thing to try is to reset the car’s body computer. The first way to try is to hold the lock button down on the remote for about 30 seconds. Sometimes this will force a reset.

If that doesn’t work, disconnect the car’s battery overnight and reconnect it next morning. You will have to rest your clock and radio station presets, but this will sometimes restore the computer to its factory settings. If none of that works, you may have a dud micro switch that’s giving the computer bad information, or the body computer itself may be on the way out.

Unless the water has come up through the floor and somehow got into the seatbelt mechanism or parts of it, the most logical answer is that rainwater has entered through an open window, run down the seatbelt webbing and into the mechanism under the seat. Failing that, if the floor and carpet has somehow got wet in the past, some water may have leached into the mechanism.

The question is: how do you know this has happened? The pretensioners only ever fire in the case of a collision, so their condition is pretty much an unknown until you need them. If, however, you’re referring to the inertia-reel mechanism that locks the seatbelt when you pull on it suddenly, then I’m sticking with the open-window-rainstorm theory, as water could definitely run down the belt webbing and into this part of the seatbelt assembly. Failing that, the moisture could be condensation that collected if the vehicle had been stored in a damp environment for some time.

The only real way to properly overcome a dashboard – or a 'check engine’ – warning light is to fix the problem that caused it to light up in the first place. Cars like yours have lots of sensors dotted around them to keep an eye on things like the emissions controls and a small glitch in one of these can cause the warning light to illuminate.

The best way forward is to have the car electronically scanned at a workshop equipped to do so. From there, the car can tell the mechanic what’s wrong and you can pinpoint the exact problem. Otherwise you’ll be stabbing in the dark, as these systems can be very complex and made up by lots of different sensors and triggers, all of which can give the same warning light.

Beyond that, a car’s oxygen sensor (which lives in the exhaust system and sniffs the engine’s emissions) is a likely culprit. But don’t guess: scan the car’s computer and find out for sure.

You need to go back to basics here. Check that the battery is connected firmly and that all the connections and low-voltage leads that power and trigger the starter motor are in their correct places and receiving power. Don’t forget to check for earth straps and cables that might have been left off in the reassembly process, too.

If the car is getting power (and the dashboard lights suggest it is) then there’s a problem between the ignition key and the starter motor. Tackle it methodically, checking for power (a test lead or multimeter will be invaluable for this) as you work your way towards the starter motor and you’ll probably find it’s something really simple and basic. Make sure the fuse or relay for the starter motor hasn’t been fried during the gearbox swap, too.