| Author | Message | ||
     Vladimir Ivanovich Kirillov Grand Master Username: soviet Post Number: 1442 Registered: 02-2013 |
I am not impressed. Is it worth reading the magazines where this type or that type of car is roadtested and commented upon? Why well because at the moment I am having a nightmare repairing a 1999 Holden Rodeo V6 for the grandson. The mongrel was overheating. I did a quick diagnosis and decided the radiator was clogged. Yep one of those late model silly things with plastic tanks and aluminum cores that cannot be repaired. But I thought, to hedge my bets by testing the thermostat. Looking back on it I should have just said to my daughter who bought it for the boy, that she should take it to the nearest wrecker and get $50 bucks for it and write off the $1500 she paid for it. I curse myself and went against my intuition that it was an overhead quad cam computerised money pit as well as being a mechanic's nightmare. The fools that designed the engine saw merit in putting the thermostat in the top of the aluminium block under the intake manifold on top of which is the ecu. ...And all types of methods are needed to get the thing apart because this engine has lots of sneaky ten mm bolts at the back of the engine leaving little room to get at it with spanners. Yes these nasty little ten mm bolts hold onto steel brackets/ steel pipes. To make it more reliable coolant hoses, three or four of them are in the valley of the engine under the intake manifold. Furthermore, the design brain thought it prudent to drive the water pump by the timing belt and put that behind the timing belt necessitating the removal of the harmonic balancer and the timing belt. Crazy. This car is actually an Isuzu built in either Spain and or Thailand. It is not a Holden regardless of the badge. It is evidence of Holden prostituting the Holden name to fool the gullible Australian public. Since when did a common class ugly ute require an overhead quadcam, computerised fuel injected V6 engine? Oh I had to chop one of the fuel lines to get the intake manifold free as the clamp on the line was inaccessable with normal plies. They use those dumb squeeze type clamps that lose tension. The fuel line hose I am talking about is about 4 inches long. The price in the quote I got to buy is around $250 for this one fuel hose. Insane. So you go to the internet and look at the reviews. They are all total BS stories raving on about what a marvellous vehicle it is. The hell it is. So all my above yap is to provide you with one question: Why don't car journalists who think they are providing the non mechanical minded public analyse the vehicle properly in relation to repairs? Replacement of thermostats and water pumps is a very common matter in the car trade. Its not like removing the planetary gears in the automatic is it? The same should be applied to RRB reviews to let the well-heeled who buy these late models and the future custodians who attempt to care for repair and restore them know for certain what precisely they are getting themselves into. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3313 Registered: 04-2003 |
Vladimir, Have you ever thought why the old saying "Never a fool like an old fool" originated? I have.........................  |
