Barry

I thought y'all might like a glimpse of the classic car scene from my home country. I haven't seen any of these models of car since I've been in UAE.

Indeed, but my answer of Japanese has a lot more to do with reliability than just oil leaks. I've never owned an American car and with good reason, from working on them I find them to be shoddily built from cheap materials. I've owned plenty of German cars, I have a real passion for older VWs but from working on newer VWs I'd never own one, they're always broken. Same goes for Mercedes and BMW, I've owned older ones but I'd never buy a newer one. I've owned loads of Japanese cars, never really had any passion for any of them but they always just worked when I needed them to. In my opinion, Toyota build the best cars in the world. Still doesn't mean I don't find them lacklustre and dull though.

An oil change is an oil change, it isn't rocket science and somewhere like this would be a quick and easy place to have it done. It's very important that you make sure they use a quality flush, use the correct grade of oil, change the filter and stamp your service book when they do it. Especially with such a young car, flushing is very important as it will decrease the changes of sludging further down the line. I don't suppose you have considered doing it yourself? It's one of the most simplest and cheapest jobs you can do on a car yourself.

Hi @treks It's always good to hear and debate differing opinions I put to you this point, just take a walk through the garages in the industrial area of Sharjah, even the DIP area of Dubai, there are a lot of them using pirate copies of original software for diagnostic/programming work. The legality/morality of this is a different point, but a copy of a disc will still cover the functions of the original disc. After all, the original disc is still a copy ripped from a manufacturers computer somewhere. I fail to see how using a copy of software can cause harm. Sure, it might not be up to date, it might not be able to read the ECU of the latest model out but it will still perform the job the user needs to do which is the end objective. I don't subscribe to the opinion that only "a competent mechanic who understands the operating principles of the control systems that relate to a fault code" should be able to read and interpret fault codes. Everyone should have the right to repair/attempt to repair their own car. If they screw it up, that's their tough luck, there is enough information out there to attempt most jobs. You are correct, there are thousands of fault codes but all one has to do is scan the ECU for these codes and type them into Google and there will be hundreds of other people who have experienced the same problem, possible causes, possible fixes and solutions. Even on YouTube, one will be able to find thousands of instructional videos enabling them to work on their own car. No technician knows or can remember every single fault code and I've seen plenty of "qualified" guys still hitting google with their fault codes. The forums are and always will remain the best source of information. Everyone has to start somewhere and this applies to computer diagnostics too. I still remember the first proper mechanical job I did, changing the brake pads on my 1993 Ford Sierra Sapphire. I was working in a parts department at the time and hadn't got any money to pay a mechanic so I attempted it myself. I pushed the brake caliper piston back without opening the cap on the brake fluid reservoir and flipped the seals on the master cylinder. Yeah, stupid mistake but the Internet wasn't a thing in those days but on the plus side I learnt how to change a master cylinder and bleed a braking system through so there is no air in it. Same applies to diagnostic systems. When OBD fault code readers became widely available cheaply, I bought one and taught myself how to use it. I eventually bought a better one then a better one before I knew enough that I could just get a USB to OBD lead and some software and do some programming work. Now I'm a self trained diagnostic technician to earn my living. Enough so that Mercedes Benz hired me in my home country even though I had no formal qualifications after high school. But my original point stands, everyone has the right to work on their own car, be it mechanical, electrical, diagnostic etc. Surely that's the whole point of internet forums such as this? So people can share their knowledge with others.

One thing I've noticed since I've come to Dubai is the clothing most bikers wear, especially the delivery guys. Shorts, t-shirt and helmet. No protective clothing at all. No leathers, no boots, no gloves. I've come off my bike a couple of times back home. The first time, I was wearing a helmet but was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Having no skin on my back and having to sleep on my stomach for over a month was not fun. It's not a mistake I would make again. So what makes these guys invincible? And if you ride what do you wear?

It's a beautiful, luxurious machine but would I buy one? No. The constant running repairs would bankrupt me.

Thank you. It's nice to be appreciated

As Saleem says, the main problems that occur with these DSG boxes come from the clutch kit and mechatronics unit. Sometimes it's possible to recode them but more often than not, they're just fit for scrap. A lot of garages who aren't familiar with DSG gearboxes don't realise that changing the oil and filter in the box should be done every 40k miles. People sometimes overlook this due to the extra cost but these people should ask themselves which is cheaper, a filter and some oil or a new gearbox? Prevention is always better than the cure.

The quoted figures of of 173 BHP and 225 nM from a 2.4 litre engine seem to suggest it comes from the factory tuned for economy but I would expect it could be safely remapped to produce 220 BHP. Although 173 BHP in a 1600 KG car leaves you with a power to weight ratio of 108 BHP per tonne which is more than adequate in a family car. The sort of people who buy these MPVs tend not to buy them to do track days.

@harryd I would love to start a business like that but sadly I'm skint. Technicians salary is pretty low in Dubai, especially when you consider the amount of specialist stuff we're expected to know and the fact we have to constantly read, train and keep up to date with new technologies. However, if someone else wanted to take on that idea, I'd be more than happy to help.

I would love to start a business like that but sadly I'm skint. Technicians salary is pretty low in Dubai, especially when you consider the amount of specialist stuff we're expected to know and the fact we have to constantly read, train and keep up to date with new technologies. However, if someone else wanted to take on that idea, I'd be more than happy to help.

Jack car up, remove wheels, fit the wheels that were originally on the front to the back and vice versa. 10-20 minutes if you have the proper tools such as a vehicle lift and air gun. But as stated, this can only be done if the front and rear tyres are the same size. The size will be stamped on the side of the tyre and look something like 245/40 R18. 245 is the width of the tyre in millimetres, 40 is the depth of the sidewall in millimetres and 18 is the size of the rim in inches. Why they mix metric and imperial sizes on tyres I don't know. A few manufacturers have tried to use strictly metric sizing in the past but it never really took off. There is no recommended mileage to rotate your tyres at. Tyres wear differently on different vehicles according to factors such as how the car is driven, tracking, environmental factors etc. and rotation should be done based on a visual comparison of wear between front and rear.

Can you post a picture of it so we can see? Too much polishing isn't good for a car. Every time you polish, you're effectively removing a small layer of paint. A new layer of clean paint is exposed and this is where the shine comes from. Any detailer worth his salt will check the entire car with an ultrasonic paint depth gauge like the one below before he even plugs the buffing machine in. Some parts of the paint may be thinner than others and require a lighter touch when polishing. The other picture I have posted is typical of where the polishing has been so severe that the paint has been burnt through. It's more important to use a high quality carnuba wax to protect the existing paint layer than it is to polish it every day. When I started driving I was very proud of my first car and polished it 2-3 times a week. The car always had a mirror finish and you could see your reflection in the paint but it wasn't long before patches of grey primer started showing through the white and eventually I had to repaint the entire car. It was a hard learning curve but then again I'm a mechanic/electrician, not a detailer. Something else I would recommend is to use the two bucket method when you're washing your car. Keep your soap and water in one bucket and have another bucket with just plain cold water in it. Every time you dip the sponge the the soapy water and wipe your car, dip the sponge in the bucket of plain water before you dip it back into the bucket of soapy water. This way your sponge and soapy water is always clean, you're not rubbing dirty water and sand round your paint every time causing lots of fine micro scratches.

The fault occurred when you washed the engine? It's possible that the sensor is ok and you just have water in the plug causing a short. The first thing I would try is disconnect the plug, check for signs of corrosion on the pins, spray some WD40 into both sides and reconnect it. If the EML is still on, reset it and go for a drive and check. Worth looking at, could save you a few Dirhams.

Have you considered doing a track day at Dubai Autodrome? There will be information on their website. Failing that, and not that I condone it, I have seen a bit of action taking place on the road from Sharjah to Oman but you have to ask yourself if it's worth the hassle and if you have enough wasta to deal with it if you're caught.

The two ratings to be concerned with are Ah (Amp-hour) and CCA (Cold cranking amps). These relate to how the battery empties its charge. CCA is pretty simple, if your battery is 800 CCA, this means it will supply 800 Amps for 30 seconds at 0 degrees fahrenheit. This is related to starting your car and the large current the starter motor draws. Ah is a little more complicated. It relates to how your battery discharges with a small load over a long time. Amps x time in hours to work it out. Say your battery can supply 4 amps for 10 hours, 4 x 10 = 40 Ah. When changing your battery, especially on modern cars, it's important to change it for one with an equal or greater rating. With modern cars, if the battery isn't supplying enough power, it can trigger undervoltage faults in components which it turn can trigger all sorts of seemingly random faults. I've recently worked on a fairly new BMW where one garage told the customer that they needed a new gearbox because of all the fault codes that were appearing. A quick check on some live diagnostic data with the vehicle running raised my suspicions that the battery might be faulty. On inspection, the battery appeared to be brand new. I spoke to the customer who informed me that he had fitted a new battery a month ago. I checked and the battery he fitted was of too low a rating. Correctly rated battery ordered and fitted and the gearbox came good again. One happy customer with his bill a lot smaller than it could have been.

You need either a voltmeter or a multimeter which is capable of reading volts. Most multimeters that you can buy in a shop will be able to do it. Simply set the range on it to anything above 12 volts, connect the red probe to the positive battery terminal and the black probe to the negative battery terminal. Even if you connect the probes the wrong way round, it doesn't matter. You will still get the same reading, it will just have a minus sign in front of it.

The emissions test tests your exhaust gas for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbons and particulates. Aside from being an environmental thing, it's a good indicator of the condition of your engine and how it's running. If the fuel/air mixture is wrong, usually caused by a dirty/faulty sensor somewhere causing over or underfuelling. On older cars it was used to set up the mixture on carburettors.

These days you don't even need a scan tool, you just need a laptop and a lead which you can probably pick up for 50 Dirhams, maybe less, from one of the internet sites. There are loads of software available to buy cheap or rip from the torrent sites for free depending on what car you have, i.e. Consult 3 for Nissan, VCDS for VW/Audi vehicles, Planet for Peugeot vehicles, Google will tell you what the specific software for your vehicle is. Or, you can just get a piece of software like Delphi Diagnostics which is pretty comprehensive and will cover most vehicles. Then it's just a matter of installing the software and connecting your laptop to your car viz the OBD port and playing around with the software until you learn how it works. Don't worry, you can't break your car by reading/erasing fault codes but if your software has any programming options, I would recommend staying away from them until you learn properly how engine management systems work and how your software relates to them.

Overheating is a main cause. Causes the cylinder head and block to warp if it's aluminium. The gasket can't do it's job properly if the two surfaces it's supposed to seal aren't flat. I see a lot of gaskets fail because they corrode due to the system being filled with tap water instead of proper coolant or the correct coolant mixture. Coolant has corrosion inhibitors to stop this from happening while plain water speeds up the corrosion process. This is especially true on cars with aluminum engines.

The difference in the quote and actual price to repair LOL! It would surprise you how many mechanics break things when they're working on your car. The part is usually replaced/repaired and the customer never finds out. I see it all the time. The way some of them treat your car on a test drive. I spent a while in a garage here in Dubai but I wasn't happy with a lot of things so I left. The way the workshop foreman and business owner drove customers cars was shocking. Just because it's a fast car doesn't mean you're supposed to rag it to the edge. Drive it, check the fault, look out for any other possible faults, that's it. There was at least one accident with a customers car when I was there. I don't know how many times it happened before. Mechanics will rarely tell you that they can't fix your car. Some of them will keep it for weeks and weeks trying different things and hoping they can diagnose the problem. I know of one garage here that has had a customers 4x4 for over 6 months. I figured out what the problem was pretty quickly as I'd seen it before but hey, I don't work there and they didn't pay me or ask for my opinion. They won't tell you that they used cheap, Chinese pattern parts on your car and charged you the same price as the genuine article. Before you go into a garage, tell them to keep the box/bag the parts came in and give it to you when you collect your car. Especially things like brake parts and bushings which tend to wear out faster if they're cheap and nasty. Also ask them to keep for you the old parts which came off your car. I've seen mechanics saying they changed parts which they didn't, doing things like wiping the outside of an oil filter clean and telling the customer they changed it. I actually saw one garage in the UK getting caught out, the customer marked the old oil filter with a sharpie before he left the car in for a service. The garage billed him for an oil and filter change. When the customer came to collect the car, he pointed out to the foreman where he had marked the old oil filter. The oil had been changed but the filter hadn't. There were some very red faces in the garage that morning! But in me saying things like this, please don't think all mechanics are crooks or they don't know what they're doing, this isn't true. There are plenty of decent, honest, hard-working people out there who just want to fix your car without ripping you off. For me, nothing gives me greater satisfaction than getting the job done, getting it done well and seeing the customer happy. A smile is worth a thousand Dirhams.

Yes but injectors rarely give problems. A lot of garages try to sell fancy cleaning methods and flushes to every customer but in my eyes most of it is snake oil. The only way to be sure what is causing engine hesitation is to drive it while plugged into a diagnostic tool and monitor/record live data such as fuel pressure, MAF, coil voltages etc. as the problem occurs. Even then, the cause of the problem could be something as simple as an air filter clogged with sand, a cracked/leaking boost or vacuum pipe etc. It just takes a good eye and a bit of experience to find the problem.

Accidents rarely occur due to mechanical failure. It's usually down to driver error, inexperience, driving too fast for the road/weather conditions, tiredness or plain old being distracted and not looking where you're going. The problem is you can have a crash even if you're driving perfectly. Sometimes it's not yourself you need to watch, it's everyone else! But anyway, back to mechanical failure leading to accidents, it's not something I think about when I drive. You need to have faith in your car, just keep it well maintained and serviced and the chances are it won't let you down. If you actually sat down and thought about all the thousands of parts on your car and which one could fail at any moment, it would blow your mind and you would probably never get within 100 metres of a car again.