Isuzu M UX

It is a worry, that is why I still have my 2006 Prado & my mate has kept his 2001 4.2TD Patrol! It is all very well when they say they it will get you out of trouble in ‘limp home mode’, but doubtful if that will get you over sand dunes.

I agree, just not sure where to go from here. We are getting older and things are getting just a little bit harder for us. Like getting stuff off the roof for instance and getting fuel into the car. Even with a ladder it is not that easy. After doing the Simpson over 20 times, I want to go to different places, but try telling my husband that!! I mean this is a big country, and there is a lot to see. The Cape is on the books for next year, but do we trust a newish car to do this? Stick with the older easier to fix ones. We had a Nissan Navara with us that had an air pipe split from fuel filter to carby, but it was fixable with duct tape and held well for the rest of the trip. They wanted $500 in Alice to order the part, and that did not include fitting it. Still going with the duct tape! Makes you wonder.

You get with the times and buy the relevant test equipment and include it in your tool kit. It will tell what the engine light means and can reset various things to help with the diagnosis.

Julie S2
Since you have been travelling in dry areas the outermost seal where the CV shaft goes into the frant axle assembly gets dry at the lip of the seal.
It squeals if not lubricated enough. VERY VERY common of modern vehicles.
Getting underneath and holding the outermost CV seal lip edge and spraying some Lanolin or spray grease in there will provide many KMs of travel without any worries. Do not use WD40 rubbish in there, it doesn't lubricate well at all and dries up far too quickly.
"Dirt near the wheel bearing", gee that is accurate diagnosis isn't it? since the noise happens when the wheel turns, any drovers dog should be able to determine it is near the wheel, which has bearings. If dirt was actually in near the bearings they wouldn't last long and a recovery would be happening for you, unless you carry grease, new seal and new bearings as a precaution.

Again because you have been offroad, with any modern vehicle there is a myriad of wires and connections underneath. If any water ingress or dust and slight corrosion happens in a connector or it is loose, it is likely a fault will develop. Seeing you have cleaned it and 3rd gear works again by itself only means the connecting wires have been restored until the fault happens again. Perhaps becoming familiar with what is under there and sometimes cleaning the connectors plugs by unlpugging and replacing them, you may find one isn't quite right. This is exactly what a dealer or mechanic will do, IF they really look for a fault.
If a fault happens out in the wild blue yonder, it will be better if you know something about the vehicle. No you don't have to be very technical or a mechanic, but women during wartime made gun barrels to exacting satandards and solved Nazi communication codes,etc etc, so the capability is there.

Many modern vehicle suffer from production line syndrome. Some stop suddenly because a vital earthing section of the wiring isn't touching the body or battery negative side. Most are a ring terminal which is bolted onto a paint surface and the bolt screwed into a painted hole,(gotta love production paint being electro applied) which can intermittently suddenly not connect and when cooled down, it connects again and fixes itself. If that happens, you find the many bolted ends and clean the connection. Often dealer service people undo things and replace, during their investigations and it runs again, but they can't tell you what they did. You can do it too.
When you say your packing was "floored", did you mean flawed by any chance. It all sits on the floor after all.
I think you own one of the most reliable vehicles available on the market, no vehicle is without some issues though, nothing is perfect.
Foolproof only means it resists fools, which I don't think applies here.

You could own a Toyoto or Fraud or Holden or Nissan and enjoy their current known problems, horrendous.

Just a couple of things.

The squeal would be the same on an old vehicle or a new one if it was a small pebble, also was the vehicle a manual or auto.

Get yourselves a scan gauge or ultra gauge and just leave it plugged into the obd2 port. If a light comes up it should throw a fault code and if you have the list of codes you can can at least see what is supposed to be wrong. It normally will only point you in the direction of the fault but it could also need more diagnoses to find it.

You can then either seek assistance from a dealer if you have communications by giving the fault code and they maybe able to point you in the right direction. You also can write down the code and then try to clear it.

Julie

As has been said by others get yourself a Scangauge11 or similar so that you can read the fault codes that may appear from time to time, and this tool will also allow you to clear those codes.

The high pitched noise that you experienced coming from the right front wheel I first experienced in the days of the HQ Holdens in 1971, they were renowned for it, and it is nothing more than the grease seal being dry (lacking lubricant) and nothing to be alarmed about, simply by spraying a small amount of lubricant onto the seal is sufficient to rectify/eliminate the noise but a more permanent fix is to have the wheel bearings repacked making sure that there is sufficient grease applied to the seal.

Unfortunately to avoid the problems associated with the modern vehicles fitted with computers it would be necessary to go back to vehicles built prior to the mid to late 1970's, as that is how long it has been since vehicles did not contain some form of computerised system for their BASIC operation, and even further back if you include such things as the car radio.

With the Isuzu you have one of the most reliable vehicles currently available, and should the computerised systems have some sort of glitch when you are in some out of the way location you can always just remove a battery cable for about 1 minuite and this will reset the computer to the factory settings, the vehicle may drive a little differently or even seem eratic for a short time after this whilst the computer relearns some of the individual ideosyncracies of the vehicle.

Regards
Athol

I think the thing is getting to know it better and finding out how it all works etc It has been good getting feed back on this. It sort of makes it more bearable knowing we are not alone. We want the best from our vehicle and want to use it what it was built for. Not keeping it to run around town etc. The packing thing I meant was, we simply used boxes and bags and not enough thought went into it. Our fault entirely not the car. Need a much better system, but having 3 people in the car only allows a certain amount of room. We took back seats out and left just a single and middle seat in for our Grand daughter. To set it up properly would be great, but you need to get rid of seating more or less permanently, and fit it with drawers, as a friend did to his. We just cant eliminate the seats, as we will most likely have a third person for some time to come. so many good ideas. Incidentally a friend travelling with us on this trip in his toyota hilux, did a rear wheel bearing and we followed him into Coober Pedy. Things happen out back . Rough roads and water and dust etc. Have to expect it.

Yes modern cars a complicated. We were in limp home mode (2010 Challenger) due to a blocked intercooler because of the EGR and no catch can. I have had a Scangauge 11 for 10 years and thankfully was able to clear the faults and resume normal travel. We were half way between Innaminka and Birdsville.

Don't let modern electrical systems worry you too much. They are not all that new anyway. The first car to use a computer was in 1968. They were in just about everything by the end of the 70s and early 80s. .

I started working in the trade in 1961. Electrical problems were a daily occurrence, particularly in ignition systems. I worked on countless computerised cars before changing careers and I can not remember ever having to fix a fault with any of them. That does not mean it can't happen but it is rare..

I have owned my electronic Hilux for eleven years and 140,000 ks and have never had a problem. It has been through plenty of desert sand and deep water crossings in the VHC.

The best way to find out how everything works is to buy the genuine manufacturers workshop manuals. They may be on DVDs only these days. The books you see in the auto accessory shops don't go far enough in many areas.

The flashing lights indicate a fault number. The manual tells you what part is covered by that number. The fault will be in either the computer, the sensor or the wiring.for that circuit. There will be a simple series of tests to carry out to see where it is and how to fix it. If your car is noted for having a problem in an electrical part then carry a spare. Carrying a spare sensor or whatever is no different from carrying a spare ignition coil years ago.

The wiring in modern cars can look like a nightmare but when you look at each individual circuit, they are no more complex than cars fifty years ago. The difference is there is a lot more of them all bunched together.

When you are driving in remote areas, the most common break downs are usually caused by the driver. Overloading, particularly when combined with excessive speed on rough roads, breaks chassis, wheel bearings, axle housings and wheels. It can overheat auto transmissions and engines. Lifted suspensions along with speed and heavy roof racks have caused many roll overs.

If you look through the archives of net forums you will find many tales of woe about problems in the bush but you will have to look long and hard to find one that has been caused by modern electronics.

That's the first MUX or DMAX I've heard of just stopping.
Heard of a few axles breaking but still allowing limited progress.
As for fitting larger rims it's not necessary or advisable in my book - it's extra mass placing greater demands on the suspension and brakes.

When I picked up my slide-on from Eden, for the next 13 hours, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, it drove me batty>
I thought it was coming from the steering wheel as it seemed to stop when turning the wheel, only to start squeaking again.

When finally got home, I checked under the body, nothing, I made a point with Mazda service ppl, they couldn't work out where either, one suggested whilst they had the wheel in pieces to insert the cruise control, they'd lubricate any or all things that would make it squeak.

Well, picked it up and not more than 100 mts down the road, it started again, I felt like ramming it into a pole.

When it came up for a wash and chamois, I notice the radio aerial above the door just touching the bottom of the fibreglass slide-on, your kidding me, no way, can't be, your f******* joking,

just pushed the aerial in a quarter of an inch then started tearing my hair out whilst banging my head against the brick wall

Maybe things are different in Australia, but the code readers sold to consumers here do not read everything. And as I have found out, even dealers who have all the diagnostic equipment sometimes can't figure things out...

I've had two late-model vehicles with problems dealers couldn't fix after multiple attempts. In the first case, the vehicle was registered in California so that state's consumer-friendly "lemon law" bailed me out. But this time I don't know how things are going to turn out.

Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll figure out why my Stability Control and Anti-lock Brake System warning lights come on intermittently. (Oh, and the anti-lock braking itself activates when it shouldn't.) So far the dealer has had three tries at it, and changed various parts. But just today I saw those lights pop on briefly. One or more faulty sensors? A wiring issue? A faulty computer?

A few years ago I was on a trip in southern Utah. A dozen or so vehicles were in the group. We stopped for lunch one day, and afterward one of the vehicles wouldn't start. Someone ended up driving a 600+ km roundtrip to a dealer to get a part. An ignition switch module or whatever its called. At any rate, the part wasn't "plug and play", and the vehicle had to be towed to the dealer. IIRC because the chipped key, ignition switch, and computer all needed to be programmed together.

That's when I first started to think modern vehicles are too complex (or even fragile) to take out in the "boondocks." My experiences with my own two vehicles have reinforced that view.

As others have said, if you're heading somewhere really remote get a Scangauge so you can read/clear fault codes. A sat phone could also be useful if you've got friends back at home who can look for info for you - if you're stuck somewhere remote you could call them, tell them the symptoms/error codes and they could do some research on the 'net to see how you could fix it. Calling a dealer would probably be useless unless it's a common fault - mostly I've found the people you get to speak to have no idea about anything much.