Would you advise me to buy this car locally or import it?

Hi Baraza,

Mine is not a car trouble issue, but it’s still about cars. For a person intending to purchase a brand new Mazda 3, Mazda 6, VW Golf or VW Tiguan, is it wiser to import or just buy locally?

Nehemiah, Naivasha

Hello Nehemiah from 
Naivasha,

If you are buying brand new, it would be wiser to buy locally for several very good reasons:

1. The vehicle you buy has most likely been tested for suitability to this market and has thus been tropicalised.

2. You get warranties and dealer support for the most part. Many dealers don’t like having to maintain a vehicle they did not sell themselves.

3. There are financing options.

4. Import duty on zero mileage cars is insanely high, especially for DIY imports.

5. Buy Kenyan, build Kenya. Our president is struggling to industrialise this country. Give him some assistance by giving local dealers some business. They will assemble and sell more cars if we buy more cars from them. The vehicle I am currently driving was assembled at AVA, Mombasa. It is a Mahindra double-cab, just in case you were wondering.

The curious case of a Honda Fit whose engine “knocked” without warning

Hi Baraza,

I recently hired a Honda Fit for a month to facilitate my travel during a project I was undertaking. I was doing about 50km to and fro every day. After the first 10 days with the vehicle, I did a longer trip, and after doing some 300kms, the vehicle stalled without any signal from the dashboard.

I towed the vehicle to the nearest garage where a mechanic told us the radiator had run out of coolant and the vehicle had overheated.

Eventually I had to replace the engine, which set me back by Sh40,000, exclusive of labour. I heard the mechanic refer to the replacement as “slim”. My questions:

1. A friend once told me that modern vehicles do not “knock” if the engine overheats. It just goes off, and after doing the needful, it will restart. This was not the case despite the vehicle being a 2013 model.

2. When I took the vehicle, I checked the basics: oil, coolant, brake fluid, et al, and refilled all. The vehicle had barely done 1,000kms when it stalled. Is this within the range? 

3. Why was there no signal from the dashboard, which is digital? 

4. Out of curiosity, who should bear the cost in such a case? I requested the owner to share the damage but he declined, so I footed the entire bill. There was no contract because the owner is a friend and we have been doing business (hiring) for some time.

Thank you for continuing to enlighten us
Amos

Hi Amos,

Quite an interesting occurrence you underwent there. My deepest sympathies, but car hire vehicles can sometimes do that to you. As a client you end up doing maintenance for the car owners.

Now,

1. An engine “knock” is two different things depending on who you are talking to. Some, mostly from the old school, say an engine has “knocked” when they actually mean it has seized, and I think this is what your friend was referring to. S/he is not quite right, though, overheating comes with other complications such as gasket failures, warped cylinder heads and sometimes damage to the engine block, which requires a replacement, which is what happened to you. Overheating is curable by simple means if it is not sustained, keep those temperatures up long enough and catastrophic failure awaits.

2. There shouldn’t be a timeline or range for overheating, especially if regular maintenance checks are done as you say you did. If you checked and topped up all the fluids and the vehicle still overheated, that means there is a deeper issue at hand: a cooling system failure. Depleted coolant means a leak somewhere. This is the root cause of your problem.

3. No warning means someone fiddled with the gauges, my guess is, to hide the underlying problem. Even the most basic vehicles have temperature gauges, either for the oil or for the coolant, but there has to be some form of warning or the other to let you know when things are about to go upside down.

4. In this case, since you are friends – which complicates matters – you may just have to bear the brunt of things. However, ideally an investigation should be done to establish whether the vehicle overheated by your own hand, or the overheating was caused by poor maintenance by the owner, who leased a ticking time bomb to you.

The fact that you had the vehicle for 10 days is not favourable for your case. Ten days is a long time, long enough for the owner to absolve himself of any responsibility by claiming that if the vehicle was defective it would have malfunctioned long before that.

He is not completely guilt-free, though. That the instrument cluster issued no warning before the failure is incriminating: someone definitely messed around with the gauges with dishonourable intentions, most likely to conceal an underlying problem.

There are two ways out of such a circumstance. Reach an agreement as gentlemen and shake hands, or escalate the matter and instigate legal proceedings against each other. For the given amount, Sh40,000, it may be best to shake hands. Legal proceedings may end up taking too much time, creating enemies out of former friends and probably cost more than the slim engine you bought.

Help, my Nissan Tiida Hatchback keeps stalling, what could be the problem?

Hi Baraza,

I have been reading your column every Wednesday and I must say that it is very insightful, informative and educative. I own a Nissan Tiida Hatchback, 2009, and lately, it has a tendency of ‘going off’ when I’m on the road.

The issue becomes frequent especially when the car is loaded. My biggest problem here is that I have tried several mechanics and each gives me different opinions, sometimes it’s the fuel pump (which I have changed three times) other times it is the filter, despite having serviced the car.Can you please advise on what the problem could be because the whole thing is frustrating?

Ochieng’

Hi Ochieng’,

The problem facing both your mechanics and me is that the Tiida comes with an EFI engine, which means the stalling could be from any number of reasons, some related, some diverse.

Now, stalling in a petrol engine is usually due to one of two reasons: there is no petrol, or there is no spark, so you need to check your fuel system and your ignition system.

If these two are fine and functional, now you have to start checking with sensors and electronic management units, the ECU and TCM and PCM. Those acronyms mean engine control unit, transmission control module and power control module. Somewhere in this lineup of suspects lies your gremlin.

Sorry, Comrade, but I’m not boarding this ship…

Dear Comrade Baraza,

One of my badass self-actualisation dreams is to own a real prime mover tractor head. Not to expand my bank balance but just for the kicks. I think I have found my king. His Majesty Actros 3341. Its silhouette depicts a majestic animal of prey sitting squarely on the top of the chain. Adorn it with fire spitting exhausts and you have a demon for keeps. If planet earth were under threat from an asteroid hit, this is the dragon the surviving wizards would resort to. ‘Haul mother earth from harm’s way mortals!!’ they’d command. Validate my dream and join me in comradeship.

Greetings, Comrade!

I am not sure what you are on about, but it sure sounds hilarious, if a little misguided. Why do you want to drive around in a truck if you are not transporting goods?

I get the appeal, I too I’m a huge truck and bus fan, and you are right, those rigs are a joy to toy around with pfft-pfft-ing through the numerous gears and making the cabin wobble, but take it from someone who has done this before: the novelty wears off really fast if you are not wheeling one around in a professional capacity.

They are expensive, thirsty, impractical, they don’t accelerate, handle or brake as well as regular cars and you really don’t want one as a daily, let alone need it. These are commercial vehicles, not for personal (in)convenience.

So I won’t be joining you in tooling around using the head of a juggernaut unless I decide to take up the role of a truck driver.

Baraza, not everyone knows what 4WD means…

Dear Baraza

I read in in your column some time back about the use of the small rungu in the 4WD, but I think it would have even been good to explain first what 4WD means. Many people do not know what it means, even the people with money who buy the big cars.

Perhaps it is also necessary to advise people when is it necessary to buy a 4WD. I think in 1980s, a certain prime minister in a neighbouring country ordered all government Land Rovers and Land Cruisers to be deployed from the capital city to the remote regions of the country where they are needed.

Hello,

Well, first off, thanks for the readership, and thanks for the feedback. You are right, I should have explained what 4WD means, and you know what? I have done so on page four of this magazine, feel free to check it out.

Is my Toyota Axio consuming too much?

Hello Baraza,

Keep up the good work every Wednesday, educating us about cars. Through them I have been able to make an informed decision with my first car, a Toyota Axio 2008. My question is, after his long, should one change the timing belt? It does about 9km/l. Is this a bad figure for a 1500cc vehicle?
Gillo

Hi Gillo,

I’m not sure what the maintenance protocols on a Toyota Axio are, but the rule of thumb is to replace the timing belt every 100,000km. Try and work with that figure. 9km/l from a lightweight 1.5 liter car is very poor consumption, something is not right.

Perhaps it’s the driving environment? If you are always in heavy traffic, that might explain the high consumption, but generally, the fuel mileage per liter should be in the double digits.

Why does my car produce lots of smoke when I start it?

Hi,

My car produces a lot of smoke when I start the engine, but after a few kilometers, it stops and runs okay, what could be the problem? 

Hello there,

The problem is a slow oil leak at the top of the engine, most likely through the valve seals or the valve cover. replace the seals or the cover.