A number of small successes - the Daihatsu Charade Experience

Overheating

A friend of the household decided it was time to make visit home to the US, having spent a few years here in Western Australia. On her way out she left her car (a G200 Daihatsu Charade) and gear for us to look after. She said there were "a few things wrong with the car", like it overheated "but only when you are doing stop-start driving, when you are on the freeway it seems to be fine". Her mechanic suggested that there may be a head gasket problem or something equally expensive. He put in a can of 'bars leaks' and hoped the problem would go away.

After a few days we needed to shift the car and, seeing as the sun was shining, I thought I'd take a quick look under the bonnet and see if there was anything obviously wrong. Apart from a vacuum hose that had been accidentally disconnected there didn't seem to be a lot wrong. The radiator fan was also operating all the time (it's not meant to while the engine is cold). And the heater had been bypassed - an email confirmed that there had been a heater leak and the cheapest easiest solution was simply to by-pass it. Not like it gets all that cold here after all.

While I was looking at where the radiator is fitted I noticed something a bit unusual. The radiator sits across the front of the engine bay (as is usually the case). But in this car the radiator is so small that it only fills half the available gap. Looking around I noticed there was no air-conditioning fitted to the car either. And where the AC radiator would normally have been was, well, nothing. The result is a bit like having a fan heater in your living room - hot air would circulate around and around and around, just getting hotter until the car got too hot and boiled over. Which it did. Hmmm.

To test the theory, I went rummaging through the recycling bin and found a suitable piece of cardboard (aka a pizza box) and jammed it in to fill the void. As it happens I needed to do a few messages the following day so that seemed as good a time as any to 'test' what happens when the car was running. Barely got to operating temp, let alone overheated.

Success number one!

Indicator Bulbs

A few days later, my landlady took the little car for a drive to the shops and back.
"There seems to be something odd thing with the indicators" she said. "Sometimes the ticking is like normal, and sometimes it goes completely demented".
"Was it demented when you wanted to turn left by any chance?"
"Yes! How did you know that?"

Ok, I had noticed that too. In most cars that fast ticking is a signal that one of the indicator bulbs (or globes) needs to be replaced. The quickest and easiest way to find out which bulb is to turn on the hazard lights, then walk around the car looking for lights that don't, erm, light. On the charade there are three indicator bulbs on each side - front bumper, front quarter panel, and rear cluster. Surely enough it was the front bumper on the left side.

Getting the bulb out is pretty easy. There is a Phillips (or cross) head screw that holds the assembly in place. Remove the screw, pop off the lens, pop out the housing. The bulb is a bayonet type. To remove it hold the housing with one hand, and with your other hand push then turn the bulb. Behind the bulb is a spring loaded part that will push the bulb out. If you don't have a replacement handy just put the assembly and lens back in place and screw it in while you take the bulb along with you while shopping for its replacement.

By coincidence, my landlords had a bulb go in their car, so the next day I was off to one of the local car parts stores. A bank-breaking $2.20 each and back home to install.

Installation is pretty much the reverse of removal. Undo the screw, remove the lens and housing. The bulb has to be pressed in (to overcome the pressure of the spring part) then turned. When you let go of the bulb it should stay in place - if not then you probably haven't turned it quite far enough. Test that the new bulb is working correctly (before you screw the assembly back in place) by putting on the hazard switch. Once you are happy with it all then pop the housing, lens, and screw back as they should be.

Success number 2!

Heater Core…

Wouldn't you know it, about a week after all that there was a cold snap. Brr chilly one degree mornings. That was enough for us - better fix the heater after all. A few phone calls revealed that a new item was half the cost of fixing the leaky one. But a used one from a local wrecker was almost half that price again. Since the car is nearly 17 years old I didn't see the point in spending a zillion dollars.

The wrecker visit was interesting. They had an identical model right on the fore-court so scavenging for bits was nice and easy. First we had a look to see if the core in that one was any good - but it had been bypassed just the same so that wasn't likely. I took the opportunity to see if a stuck relay was causing the fan to continually run, but swapping out the relay made no difference. Actually I could feel it switch on and off so the relay is operating correctly after all. Shrug. $60 later and a used heater core was on its way home.

Now, to get the dead one out. I (foolishly) though this would not be a big deal. Seems I should not think. Let me explain. There are three sections to the heater and fan components (not counting ducting); Fan (right by the passenger side), Air Conditioner (just an empty plastic box in this car since A/C was not installed), and the heater/vent section. The Air Con section came out really easily, only a few nuts and a couple of bolts. The heater section is a completely different story. The designers, in their infinite wisdom, chose to actually use the extra 20 square centimetres of plastic that make it impossible to remove without removing the dash. And the cross-car brace that also holds the dash and steering column in place. Yes, that means this also became a total dash removal job.

I gave up for the day at that point.

The rest of the job took a full day. Admittedly I was taking my time while pulling things apart, mostly because I wanted to avoid pain and injury as much as possible, but I also didn't want to damage the car (well, not until later at least).

Tools you will need:

• Phillips screwdriver
• Large flat screwdriver (or something to lever with)
• 10mm socket on a small ratchet drive (I have a ¼ drive that is ideal for this sort of thing)
• 10 and 12mm sockets
• Wobble-bar or universal drive. I have a 'barrel' style wobble bar and which was ideal for this job - there are several bolts that are more or less impossible to get to without one.
• Ratchet and long (6"or so) extension
• A beautiful assistant

So, here's what you have to remove:

• Heater hoses from the heater pipes in the engine bay (2 spring clips).

Glove-box (2 screws).
Glove box carrier (4 bolts).

Remove the bolts and nuts holding the air conditioner box in place. If your A/C is actually installed this may be a challenge, you might have to have it de-gassed and so on before beginning. Small mercies here ;)

Remove the bolt at the passenger end of the dash. This makes it easier to get the upper bolt for the cross-brace.
Cross-brace end bolts (2 at the passenger end, 3 at the driver end).
Knee panel under the steering column (4 screws, unplug a switch, grub screw and locating nut for the manual choke).
Steering column (6 bolts, 2 nuts). Note - the upper bolts are a different size from all the others.
Remove the radio. You don't have to remove the radio sleeve, just unplug the cables and aerial.

Centre console surround (2 screws and a couple of clips).

The heater assembly has 4 nuts at the back, 3 screws holding cable clamps, 2 vent cable thingys. There are also 4 bolts at the front, accessible through the hole where the centre console surround was.

There is an upright brace on the drivers side, 2 bolts and 2 nuts at the top, one bolt at the bottom.
Speedo cable detached from the gearbox so you can pull the instrument cluster forward. Instrument cluster surround (2 screws), then the cluster (4 screws).

Behind the cluster are 2 bolts and 2 nuts holding the upper section of the cross brace assembly.
Finally there are 4 small bolts across the front/top of the dash to be removed.