1990 Holden Statesman Pricing and Specs

There’s a variety of ways for this problem to occur, so let’s start with the basics. Is the battery in good condition? Even though it may show 12 volts on a tester, when you actually apply a load to it (via the starter motor) you may find it loses the plot. And modern, fuel-injected engines hate having low voltage when they’re trying to start or run.

The next thing to check would be whether you have power at the coil packs. If you don’t, you need to work your way upstream to find out where the power stops. The fuses and relays for the ignition are a likely culprit. And don’t forget to make sure the coil packs are earthed properly. Bad earths are an incredibly common way for modern engines to go haywire.

The SVS light is otherwise known as the Service Vehicle Soon light. It indicates that there’s something wrong with the car’s engine management (in the case of your Statesman). In this make and model, it’s often triggered by a faulty oil-pressure sensor which is relatively cheap and easy to replace.

But that shouldn’t cause the misfire. Which means you need to look further and that would start by giving the car an electronic scan. It’s worth knowing that these engines used spark plugs that required replacement at 80,000km intervals. These won’t cause the computer to log a fault code, but they do fail remarkably reliably at this mileage, and a misfire is the first symptom.

I'm not sure how an electric piece of equipment continues to function when its fuse or relay has ben removed, so maybe you need to check that you're pulling the correct fuse. The car's owner's manual should contain a list of fuses, their location and what circuit they relate to.

In any case, problems like this one are often the fault of the car's body computer which can fail, allowing all sorts of random errors to crop up in anything from the climate-control stuff to the central locking. If that's the case, a new body computer may be required, but these can be obtained second-hand to keep costs down.

But before you do any of that, try these simple tricks: Using the key fob, press the door lock button and hold it down for at least a minute. Sometimes, this is enough to reboot the computer and restore normal settings. The second thing to try is to park the car and disconnect the negative battery terminal. Wait at least an hour (overnight is better) and then reconnect the battery and see if the car's computer has reset itself. It doesn't always work, but it's free and definitely worth a shot. Just make sure you have access to the radio's security code to restart it after disconnecting the battery.