LDV G10 Problems

The most likely cause of this is a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) that is either blocked or on its way to becoming blocked and needs cleaning. Soot build-up in a DPF can restrict the flow of exhaust gasses, at which point you might also find the car’s computer will limit performance to avoid doing damage to the engine.

You can either try to force the DPF to regenerate, or you may have to have the DPF manually cleaned or even replaced.

The other possibility is a problem with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve which can also become clogged with soot and affect the vehicle’s performance and emissions. Either way a check up at a workshop with the appropriate scanning equipment is necessary.

It depends on which particular version of the G10 you have. That’s because, around this time, LDV offered three different engines in vehicles badged as G10s. There were a pair of petrol engines – one turbocharged and one without a turbo – and a turbo-diesel. Both the turbocharged petrol and the turbo-diesel used a timing chain, while the non-turbo petrol (which had a capacity of 2.4 litres) used a rubber timing belt.

As such, the two engines with timing chains should not need maintenance in this area, while the 2.4 petrol’s timing belt will need to be replaced at whatever intervals LDV specified. Workshops dealing with these cars seem to recommend a belt-change interval of five years or 100,000km, whichever comes first.

If the car drives forward then it’s possibly not the age-old problem of low or dirty transmission fluid that’s causing the problem. Even so, it may not be a catastrophic failure of the transmission and could, in fact, be as simple as a poorly adjusted gear selector cable or linkage. The sensors that operate the rear camera and reversing lights are not necessarily the same ones that actually select each gear, so the fact that they operate does not mean the transmission is physically selecting Reverse gear.

Have the vehicle looked at by a transmission specialist who will possibly have seen this very problem before. Don’t forget, either, that if the car has travelled less than 130,000km and has been serviced correctly, you may still be covered by LDV’s factory warranty which was for five years back when the vehicle was sold new. But get it looked at and the problem logged with LDV before that warranty runs out.

There’s probably a very simple solution to this involving a wire that has been disconnected during the transmission replacement, and not reconnected afterwards. You might find it’s a wire to a sensor that has been bumped or disconnected, and without this, the engine doesn’t know it is below operating temperature and, therefore, doesn’t richen the air-fuel mixture to compensate.

This compensation is how modern, electronically controlled vehicles make do without an old fashioned choke lever. But if the wiring isn’t connected and the sensors all working, the car doesn’t have the information it needs to run properly under all circumstances.

There are plenty of things that can cause this, but being a petrol engine with no turbocharger, it shouldn’t be too tricky to diagnose. Any time an engine runs well when warm but struggles when cold, suspicions are drawn to the fuel/air mixture. A warm engine needs a very different mixture to a cold engine, so modern engines have sensors that monitor the engine temperature, the air/fuel ratio and how well that mixture is burning. If any of those sensors are not telling the computer everything it needs to know, poor running can be the result.

But it would also be worth looking at the air intake side of things. An air or vacuum leak into the intake manifold can also cause rough running and hard starting. The engine’s stepper motor (which controls the idle speed) could also be at fault, but could also be the victim of one of those non-working sensors.

On most cars, you can disable beeps and buzzers that tell you the car has locked or unlocked. Many people choose to do so, too, out of consideration for their neighbours who don’t appreciate even a small toot of a car’s horn when you leave for work at 5am.

On newer LDVs, you can go to the touchscreen and hit Settings. Then touch 'Car' and then 'Comfort' and 'Convenience'. That will then offer a list of features, but the one you want to touch on is 'Locking Feedback'. That will then give you the choice of 'Lights and Horn', 'Lights Only' or 'Horn Only'. By touching on 'Lights Only', you should have disabled the horn beep when locking and unlocking. Your neighbours will thank you.

For a start, your vehicle at just over five years of age is only just out of its five-year warranty. So it would be worth contacting LDV Australia’s customer service department to see if there’s any help available for a fix, or to cover some of the costs of a fix.

Meanwhile, a lot of these plastic add-ons are attached via small plastic clips and it’s these that fail, allowing the part in question to fall off. In the old days, such a trim piece would probably have been made of metal and been secured by metal tabs or pins or even a nut and bolt. But there are some really good adhesives on the market now that would probably have the strength to effectively glue the trim piece back on. That will make getting it off again (if you ever have to) a bit messy and could damage the paint underneath, but it’s probably better than having to replace a strip of tape every few weeks.

It’s a bit hard to imagine how removing and replacing a transmission could make an engine misfire or backfire. Unless, that is, you’ve managed to bump part of the engine’s electronic controllers, wiring, sensors or even something as simple as pinched or displaced a vacuum line somewhere in the engine bay. Incorrect ignition timing can make an engine do this, but, again, that’s nothing to do with the transmission.

It could even be a complete coincidence. But did the vehicle sit for any length of time while the transmission was being fixed? You might find the battery has discharged over time. Modern, electronically-controlled engines do not like low battery voltage and can run poorly as a result.

First things first; have the car electronically scanned to see what fault codes are thrown up. From there you can make a much more accurate diagnosis of the problem. Simply replacing random sensors and other parts on a hunch is a fast way to throw money away and still be stuck with a car that doesn’t run properly.

The de-carbonising process you mention is sometimes necessary in modern turbo-diesels which, for reasons of emissions control, consume a percentage of their own exhaust gasses as well as any gas build-up inside the actual engine. And since the exhaust gasses contain soot, and the crankcase gasses contain oil, those two compounds get mixed up into a black, gooey paste that clogs the engine’s intake system. At this point it usually needs to be pulled apart and manually cleaned. If this is the case with your car, it could well be the cause of the check-engine light and the poor running.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a modern electronic fuel-injection system is smart enough not to flood an engine when starting., However, experience tells me that sometimes, you can get excess fuel into the engine if it doesn’t fire straight away. However, if you keep trying to start it, that fuel should pass through the engine, and it should eventually fire. So, I’d say your problem is something else.

A mechanic would probably start by checking things like whether the fuel pump is operating, the fuel and air filters, fuel pressure and whether the fuel injectors are pulsing when they should be. Your problem is likely to be a shortage of fuel rather than too much of it, so checking the fuel delivery pressure and rate is a critical step.