Suzuki Hatchback Range

You’re spot on when you say pinging won’t be good for the engine long term, but even in the short term, this needs to be fixed to prevent serious engine damage. The best advice is to find a mechanic or workshop that is experienced in this make and model and tap into that experience.

Fundamentally, the main causes of engine pinging (or detonation or pre-ignition, call it what you will) are a lean air-fuel mixture, incorrect ignition timing, fuel with an insufficient octane rating, carbon build-up inside the engine or an engine that is running too hot. None of these things should be hard to spot for the right mechanic.

The government has, indeed, made changes to fuel quality standards, but none of these should have affected the octane rating (or RON) of the fuel. In fact, there are mandated Standards for fuel octane, although that doesn’t rule out the odd bad batch. Do you fill up at the same service station every time? It might be time to try a new one.

This is precisely why we warn consumers about the worthlessness of extended second-hand car warranties sold through car yards. It’s amazing how many get-out clauses these contracts (for that is what they are) contain and the vast majority of them are designed to take your money and then refuse any costly claims you may have. If the warranty called for a vehicle service in 10,000km, but the transmission didn’t quite make it that far, you’d reckon you’d have a pretty good case for a warranty claim. But experience shows otherwise.

But before you do anything else, have the car inspected by a transmission specialist. It could be something less catastrophic than a completely torched transmission and the fix may be a lot cheaper than the $5000 you’re being quoted. Even if it does need a new transmission, we’d be going through the same specialist rather than a workshop suggested by the car yard that’s already dudded you.

Your car has an engine Suzuki calls K12C which is a member of the Dual Jet family. That means it does, indeed, have a pair of fuel injectors for each cylinder. It’s conceivable that one set of the injectors is not seating properly or not getting the correct signal to shut off from the computer and that is filling the cylinders with fuel. This may happen until the pressure in the fuel rail dies off, or it could continue dripping all night.

If this is what’s happening, then you shouldn’t attempt to start the car as, should there be enough fuel inside the cylinders, the engine could hydraulically lock, potentially bending con-rods and destroying the entire engine.

How have you diagnosed this as the problem? Have you removed the injectors and had them checked or tested? This sounds like a pretty odd sort of problem for a car as new as this.

The other possibility is that the injectors are getting a computer signal they shouldn’t and leaking as a result. This is a tempting theory as it might also explain why the fan continues to run with the engine switched off. However, it pays to remember that many cars will continue to run their cooling fan after the ignition has been turned off as a way of reducing the temperature of the engine, even though it’s stopped. This should have no effect on the injectors, though.