Ask the Guide

Most glow-plug systems in diesel cars work on a timer system. The manufacturer will have worked out that X seconds of current will heat the plugs to a temperature sufficient for easy starting, so that X-seconds period is where the timer will be set.

What happens, though, is that glow plugs can lose their efficiency over time (and with 233,000km on board, your car is a candidate for that to have happened). As that efficiency is lost, they don't produce the same amount of heat as they used to and, therefore, the timer isn't giving them long enough to heat the combustion chamber sufficiently. When that happens, the engine becomes hard to start. The other possibility is that the timer itself is faulty and isn't giving the plugs power for long enough. The fact that your engine starts easily after the first cold start of the day, suggests the glow-plugs are, indeed, at fault here.

The other possibility is that the car's electrical system is not sending enough voltage to the glow plugs to make them work properly. This can be verified quickly and easily with a voltmeter. This method can also verify the length of time the timer is supplying power to the plugs.

In vehicles where the timer has already shut off the power to the glow-plugs before enough heat has been generated, the solution is often a new set of glow-plugs. The good news is that these aren't expensive, nor are they difficult to change if you know what you're doing. The caveat is if you aren't sure of what you're doing, at which point the fuel system on a common-rial diesel injection system can be very dangerous to tamper with due to the super-high pressures involved.

It's good news. Your car is indeed compatible with E10 fuel which means you can use the slightly cheaper fuel without risking damage to your vehicle. The car should also run exactly the same as it does on normal unleaded petrol, although you may find you use slightly more fuel per 100km. This should, however, be more than offset by the savings you'll make at the pump.

Both those models of Holden used the same engine; the L36 (Holden's internal code) Ecotec V6. As such, you should be able to fit the engine from the VT Commodore into the Statesman with very few other changes. The biggest hurdle will be if the Commodore donor car was a manual-transmission vehicle, as the ECU may be different to the Statesman's unit to allow for control of the electronic transmission. The best bet is to retain the Statesman's wiring and computer and change over only the engine hardware from the Commodore.

The other (minor) catch is that the VT's version of the V6 was tuned for 147kW, while the later version of the same engine in the Statesman was good for 152kW. There was a small torque difference, too (304Nm plays 305Nm). So you'll be trading off a small amount of performance but, realistically, not enough to notice.

The smell you're describing has been around since 1986 when all new cars sold in Australia were forced to use unleaded petrol. That move was to protect the catalytic converters fitted from that date (leaded fuel would have damaged them) and the combination of these converters and the new fuel resulted in the smell you're noticing. So it's not new, but it does vary from car to car and possibly even from one brand of fuel to another.

It's supposed to be harmless to humans, but if you can smell it, that automatically means you're being exposed to other chemicals in the car's exhaust emissions, including various carcinogens and carbon-monoxide which is a known killer. Think of the rotten-egg smell as an early-warning system that there's exhaust gas in the air around you. Excessive gas can also be a symptom of a car's engine that is not turned correctly.

It's really important not to run a car engine inside a garage for any longer than is absolutely necessary as these toxins can build up very quickly. It sounds like your garage is attached to your house, and that reminds me why garages were once separate to the house they served. (As were kitchens in the very old days, as a means of ensuring a kitchen-fire didn't take the rest of the house with it.) Don't be tempted to reverse into the garage, instead drive in nose-first, leaving the tailpipe nearest the garage opening and never start the car with the garage door closed.