Nissan SUV Range

You might be dealing with a broken engine or transmission mount that is allowing the driveline to `flop about’ when it’s running. The looseness is allowing the small vibrations from the engine to turn into big vibrations that are causing the exhaust to hit something it shouldn’t be. Perhaps the engine is running rougher than usual, at which point you need to look into its tuning.

But, equally, you could be looking at a simple rubber exhaust mount that has either broken or jumped ship, allowing the exhaust to flail around under the car. You really need to get the car on a hoist and look underneath to see what’s loose and what’s not where it should be. A good mechanic should be able to pin point the noise (and its cause) pretty quickly.

A loss of engine power can be due to many things. Most mechanics will start with a check of the fuel and ignition systems to check for things like dud spark plugs, ignition timing, broken ignition leads and coils and whether or not enough fuel is reaching the engine (worn fuel pump or blocked fuel filter). If all that checks out, then the search will move to mechanical things like the camshaft timing, and whether there’s a leaking engine valve or a vacuum leak somewhere.

The 2.5-litre petrol engine in your X-Trail is a very well known quantity, so there’s plenty of expertise out there. A workshop that deals with Nissans in particular may have seen exactly this problem before and will be able to go straight to the cause.

Meantime, don’t rule out the really obvious stuff like a dragging brake that could be making the vehicle feel sluggish.

Short answer: No. The park-brake warning light is there to help prevent you driving off with the park brake engaged. But really, all the lights on the dashboard should go off when you turn off the ignition and lock the car. The possible exception is a flashing light to warn would-be car thieves that the car is alarmed.

Dashboard lights (and other lights) that randomly light up when the car is switched off can be a sign of a slowly dying body computer, but you should never ignore a warning light for the braking system. You could find the light is being triggered by an actual fault in the park brake mechanism, including maladjusted cables, worn brake pads or some other mechanical problem. But we’d also check the owner’s manual to make sure that the same warning light is not designed to be triggered by some other braking problem like, for instance, low brake fluid level.