Holden Commodore – A Great Australian Car?

[Cav]

First I must admit that I am a Ford guy. I’ve owned a lot of Fords – my wife keeps a list. At the moment I have a 2002 AUIII XR8 ute and a 1981 TF Cortina 3.3 manual.

I’ve also owned a couple of Holdens – a VL Belina and a VUSSII Ute.

In September last year I purchased a VE Commodore International. This was my first brand spanking new car in a long, long time. The reason I wanted a new car is that we intended to travel and I wanted something that would reliably cover long distances in comfort.

So why not a Falcon I hear you ask? Easy. I hired a Falcon last year when we were in Brisbane. I found that because of the osteoarthrosis in my left knee, a couple of hours in the Falcon had me in pain and limping badly when I got out of the car. A shame really, but at 60 years of age it is a fact of life that your body is in payback mode for all the things you did to it that you shouldn’t have. It will happen to you too.

The International was a good buy. It was a special, built on the Omega. The extras were : leather seats; leather steering wheel; 6 stack CD; rear parking sensors; fog lights and 18” alloys. I wanted LPG, but only a limited number were made and none were left. The dealer offered to install gas for me which I accepted. There was a government rebate of $2000 if the gas was installed prior to purchase.

The car was standard except for the gas of course, but I also had an amp and woofer type speakers installed in the rear parcel shelf. The amp was integrated into the Holden sound system and boosted all speakers. This gave a nice full sound without going over the top. This meant that I could listen to Barry Manilow’s music the way it should be played for those long journeys we were planning.

I also upgraded the lights. I was going to fit driving lights on a bar similar to what the Police use on their cars, but the guy would not guarantee that the lights wouldn’t vibrate; and there is nothing worse than driving lights throwing a dancing beam in front of you on a dark night. So I fitted HSV lights which have a projector low beam. These were upgraded with 4300k bulbs. I retained the H9 bulbs as these were OK on high beam. The results were very good. I particularly liked the wide spread on low beam to both sides of the road. We were ready to roll.

So all up, the car cost me $40,000 to get it to what I believe was a very capable long distance economical touring machine.

I wanted a few kilometres on the car to iron out any bugs that may arise. I’m a realist and I understand that things happen. The only problem we encountered was the air conditioner not working efficiently and the condenser was replaced. We were running the car on gas all the time and at the 15,000 service we did not log any warranty problems. Things were looking good. I had definitely made the right choice.

Or so it seemed......

We planned the big trip:
Home to Adelaide via Mildura
Put the car on the Indian Pacific from Adelaide to Perth.
Tour South West WA
Drive home.
EZY

The car was ready. Two adults, luggage; and some bedding in case we needed it. I fitted a homemade bug screen to protect the radiator because I knew there were locusts in western NSW.


My wife, Paula, and the Commodore, ready for our trip of a lifetime. I’d done my homework. We were well prepared.

With both tanks full we headed south. A couple of hours into the trip we struck problems.

A ‘contact dealer’ message came up and at the same time the petrol fuel gauge, which was full as we were running on gas, showed empty. Other than that, the car was running fine. The nearest Holden dealer was at Wagga Wagga. I rang and explained our problem and that we were heading to Perth, and asked if he could take a look at it. He said he couldn’t fit us in until the follow week! He suggested we monitor our kilometres so we didn’t run out of fuel. Gee, thanks mate.

We pushed through to Balranald, still running on gas OK.


Locusts that didn’t survive the Hay plain

We drove to Lake Mungo before planning to head to Mildura that night.

That’s when it happened.

Nothing.

The car was completely dead. No lights, no warning lights on the dash, nothing. I recalled earlier in the day that the parking lights were on. I thought that was strange, as the car has an auto lights off feature. So maybe the battery was flat. It was 2pm and we were 100 kilometres from Mildura at Lake Mungo with no mobile phone reception.

I asked one of the workman out there if he had a set a of jumper leads. It turns out he did. Now I know with modern cars you have to be very careful when using jumper leads, apparently the electronics can fry if used incorrectly. That didn’t worry me because if it happened to our Commodore I’d simply set it alight then and there!

I hooked up the leads and the car started easily. Phew! My wife said don’t turn it off and let’s head to Mildura! Then another thought occurred to me. We had travelled about 150 kilometres on dirt roads from Balranald, some of it corrugated. Maybe a battery lead shook loose. The battery is located in the boot and sure enough the negative lead was loose, so I tightened it up and continued on our way to Mildura. It was then I noticed that the two error messages had disappeared from the dash.

The next day we did a bit of sightseeing, and as we were returning to Mildura the ‘contact dealer’ message came up again; and the petrol fuel gauge was not working. I didn’t ring the Holden dealer this time, I just drove straight in to the Holden dealer at Mildura. A very helpful service guy hooked up a thingamajig under the dash and did some diagnostic testing. He declared that there was an intermittent fault in the upper fuel sender, or something like that. He reset the error message and we were now confident that it was a faulty sender unit and we could drive around the problem, as they say in racing circles.

On our way to Adelaide the error message came up again, later the second error message of ‘check engine’ came up as well. Now I’m smart enough to know that the car is running fine and the problem seems to be with the computer. It brought back memories of the film, 2001 A Space Odyssey, where the computer was programmed to ensure that the mission succeeded, even, as it turned out in the film, if that meant killing all humans on board. That computer was called HAL, a spoof on IBM by having one letter near each. Anyway, I was not confident that our HAL would let us get across the Nullarbor without shutting us down. Clearly, as it was Saturday and no chance of getting to a Holden dealer, we were in trouble.

On Sunday, we loaded the car onto the Indian Pacific and headed to Perth. The train journey was marvellous, but hanging over our heads was the fact that we had to drive back across the Nullarbor, in an unreliable car, in a couple of weeks time.

On Tuesday we hit Perth and I rang Perth City Holden and told them our problem. Mel was great on the phone and soon we were at the service department waiting for someone to have a look at our car.

The Workshop Manager, Dave Appleby, was fantastic. He knew what the problem was – it was the aftermarket gas system fitted to the Commodore. There was nothing wrong with the system that cost me $4,500. It was a software change that Holden apply to their gas vehicles, but had not been applied to mine.

Bewdy, easily fixed I thought. Well, not quite.

You see, Holden will not release the codes, not even to their own dealers. Now the following is what I believe to be the problem area, based on my understanding of the issue, so I may stand corrected on some of the finer detail.

Conditions for Setting the DTC
The ECM does not detect a change in fuel level in the secondary fuel tank of at least 45 percent over a distance of 120 km (75 miles).
The above condition is present for 30 seconds.

This fault never occurred until we set out on our long journey because we usually only had about ¼ tank of petrol; whereas for our big journey we had both petrol and gas tanks full, but we were only running on gas. Hence the conditions for the coding were met, and the fuel gauge was shut down. This is turn led to the error messages even though everything was working OK.

It seems odd that Holden will not release a fix to the dealers.

Still, as I said before, we will drive around the problem. We decided to run only on petrol so that HAL wouldn’t suspect any shenanigans going on and shut us down.

The car performed well as we toured South West WA; and then we crossed the Nullarbor and headed for home. It was at a stop at Ouyen, in Victoria, about 1500kms from home, that we discovered another problem.

The motel guy was a car guy. He noticed that the rear tyres on the Commodore we worn out. Impossible I thought. They were OK before we left home and the car has only done 25,000 kms. I checked them out. Sure enough, the rear tyres were stuffed. We had crossed the Nullarbor on wet roads with bald tyres, we were lucky that we didn’t have an incident.

The tyres were so bad they would not get us home.


Picture taken 200kms east of Norseman, plenty of tread on those rear tyres to cross the Nullarbor, yet they will be bald when we get to Ouyen, 2,000kms later.

We diverted to Swan Hill, about 140kms away. Even though it was out of the way, I figured that we would get the right tyres for the car at a large regional centre. It took three tyre dealers though. The guy at Goodyear Swan Hill was fantastic. He said he was not surprised that the rear tyres were worn out, indeed he was surprised that we had got the distance we had out of them. He mentioned a local guy who only covered 7,000kms before his rear tyres wore out. Apparently it is to do with the design of the rear suspension. I couldn’t believe it! We are not revheads, so I expected at least 40,000kms as I’ve easily got that distance on other cars I’ve owned. I did a lot of research before buying the Commodore and I can’t believe I missed the problem with gas; and now extreme wear on tyres!

The tyre guy asked me what sort of tyres I wanted. I told him the same as what’s on the car. He said they are $538.... each.

EEK!

So we had cheaper tyres fitted and continued on our journey home.


A big Australian car designed in Australia by Australians for Australians. Just the ticket for touring this wide brown land. Really?

Summary
I thoroughly researched a suitable vehicle for us to do some long distance touring, comfortably and efficiently.

Falcon seats aggravated a knee condition of mine, so I excluded the Falcon.

I didn’t want a 4WD.

The Holden Commodore International, on gas with upgraded lighting and stereo, seemed a wise decision.

The car let us down, it didn’t ruin the holiday we had planned for so long, but it did cause us some angst.

Holden will not release the codes, even to their own dealers, to fix a fuel related bug on cars fitted with aftermarket LPG. This is turn leads to error messages from the car’s computer and completely shattered our confidence in the car which I nicknamed HAL.

A poorly designed rear suspension that can result in extreme tyre wear under certain conditions. I found out later it occurs when heavily laden and driven on undulating roads – gee just like we encountered on our trip of a lifetime across Australia.

I have two faults in my car that are not uncommon and are known to Holden. I’ll approach the dealer I bought the car from 9 months ago and see if I can get any satisfaction. There is a castor kit available for the rear suspension, and we’ll see if I can get those codes to keep HAL silent.

Maybe I should look at replacing the Commodore. I wonder if Holden will put the V6 into the Cruze?

Holden Commodore - The Great Australian Car - if you don't carry stuff on long trips you'll be OK.

Is this how car design has progressed in this day and age?

It would appear so.

[ari666]

holy hell man!!! you need to get a life.

[Grennan]

So to cut a ridiculously long story short, the aftermarket gas system had a fault and the general wear and tear of a almost round trip of Australia has worn your tires out?

I would've seriously covered the car in petrol and lit it on fire.

[vk.jonno]

edit: oops just realised comment about lol
exactly wat him and ari sed get a life

[Cav]

Well picked up Grennan

Maybe I'm just naive.

On reflection, apart from 4WDs, there were no new cars crossing the Nullarbor.....

Plenty of old Falcons and Holdens though

And this is the point of my 'ridiculously long story' .... new cars just don't cut it anymore!

There is nothing wrong with the after market gas system. It's just that Holden knows there is a software bug, and has a fix it for its own gas cars, but refuses to release the fix even to its dealers.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me!

I will be having words with the dealer soon.

BTW The tyres wore out in 2,000kms - just look at the pictures.

The moral of the story?

The Commodore can't complete a crossing of the Nullarbor if it is carrying an average load of two people and their luggage

[hakhawk]

bit hard to tell the wear on those tyres from those pics. they look fine on my computer screen

ps. holden dont make tyres...

[DanVG]

I work at a rental car company in a remote area so I have the advantage of seeing what cars would look like in 5 or 6 years time in only a few months of use (they do about 80,000 km a year). And I can say the VE is a very comfortable and reliable car for long trips, sorry mate you just had a incredibly long run of bad luck. Our cars get treated like crap, driven like bumper cars, washed 3 or 4 times a week and regularly contribute to the culling of the local roo population. And generally all we have to do to maintain them is service them every 10,000 km. After a year or so of use the only thing that gives them away as a rental car is the high km (the fords and toyota's on the other hand, wow! they look crap!).

Some advice from somebody who drives from WA, or the NT to NSW a couple times a year;

- Buy your own tyre gauge, the ones at roadhouses are crap and never calibrated (I say that could have contributed to the tyre ware)
- Rent a sat phone (about $100 for a week), you are doing 6 months driving in a few days ..... stuff is going to happen!
- Gas is a bad choice! when I lived in Kununurra for a few years they ran out of gas in the 'wet' for a month or so

But yes, "they don't build them like they used too" ....... however I manage to do 700 km in a a fully loaded 5.7L V8 ute on the highway, so it isn't all bad!

[DanVG]

The Commodore can't complete a crossing of the Nullarbor if it is carrying an average load of two people and their luggage

Not trying to start a fight, but that should be a 'My' not a 'The' ........ our cars do it daily!

[ARATIC]

I liked that, well written.

I can understand your frustration, you should be able to take a long trip in a brand new car without having issues like this. Not the thing you want when your on holiday attempting to relax and enjoy yourself!

[Cav]

The reason the rear tyres wore out in 2,200kms (well 25,000kms - but they were OK at 23,000kms as per the pics just east of Norseman)

The design of the rear suspension is the problem

Under load, the tyres splay out. This is because Holden deleted camber adjustment when it built the Commodore's rear suspension as a cost cutting measure. The kit costs $400

When driven laden on undulating roads, the tyres move left to right as the load changes the camber of the rear tyres. They are effectively scrubbed bald.

I suggest you doubters Google "excessive tyre wear Commodore"

[Cav]

Thanks aratic

[Cav]

I was interested in your comments Dan about rentals.

What sort of distance are you getting out of Commodore rear tyres, as say against the Falcon?

[DanVG]

Ill ask our tyre guy tomorrow for the exact figure, but for commodore vs falcon they are roughly the same.

With rentals though, the attitude of 'its just a rental' extends to tyre pressure ..... so we do get allot of uneven tyre wear simply due to people not checking tyre pressure and driving a couple thousand km.

Sorry another edit .... But yea mate, you should be able to jump in a new car and drive across the country. You will often find that you will have horror trips, then on the next few you won't have a single drama. Some other people have something small go wrong on every trip .... its all just chance (maybe karma is just getting you back for owning so many Fords!)

[Cav]

Karma? For owning great cars?

Geez, you might be onta something Dan

[Cav]

BTW, I have a blog where i posted this story...

Cav's Blog

If you really have masochistic tendencies, you can read all about our trip, day by day.

Warning! There are pictures of me!

[flyjoe180]

Well written report I thought, if not a bit long. Hope you managed to scrape all those locust corpses off the car!

[_R_J_K_]

Hmm... the only flaw I can see in that post is that I'm pretty sure that "HAL" wasn't a spoof on IBM, and Stanley Kubrick said that had he realised that at the time, he would not have gone with HAL.

Holden's IRS setup (on pretty much all of their models) has always been pretty poor in comparison with many Japanese and European setups. Also, I have read many a time that people will never buy a new Holden again because of the crap that they have to put up with from dealers. Holden (or GM maybe) have never really seemed to be one of those manufacturers that have been hugely concerned with after sales support, unless it's a recall for something possibly life threatening. Maybe a bedding in period was needed? They have never really taken much responsibility for their design mistakes - warped airbag covers, piston slap, fan speed and vent problems etc... I'm not really familiar on problems with the newer Commo's, but you get the point - little things that cost buyers big bucks to replace which they are really not at fault for.

All of this is easy to say in retrospect of course. I'm really of the opinion that they make a great(ish) car, but they are a far from superior company to deal with (the problem with the car is not that it is a Holden, but that it was made by Holden). From what I have read about other people's interactions with dealerships, you have to be really lucky to get a good one. The closest experience I've had is the parts desk (which has been pretty good).

Hmm... I didn't really say much there did I, make of it what you will.

[Cav]

I bin smellin' cooked locusts for days now flyjoe.

And RJK, your comments about customers service, or lack thereof, are just as valid for Ford as they are for Holden.

I'm not rushing into my local dealer as I know none of the issues will be fixed, oh unless I pay $400 for the camber kit; but the other problem - well we are just driving around it - We are still running on gas and we don't get error messages if we keep less than half a tank of petrol in the car while we are driving on gas.

Look don't get me wrong, the Commodore is a great long distance tourer. We've done about 30,000kms in 9 months!

[DanVG]

G'day Cav,

Had a look today and we usually replace the tyres around the mid to low 30's mark. They are changed a couple 1000's km's early to stay on the safe side. We are also getting a similar problem where they wearing more on the inside, however not as severe as your case. I would say if you plan to do a few more roadtrips the $400 camber kit would be a worthwhile investment.

[Cav]

Thanks Dan

[HamaTime™]

Well I can understand your pain at having a basically brand new car 'die' on you in such circumstances. However, 1 out of 100 cars will be a lemon and have a problem. A Ford or Toyota equivalent would be no different. Sometimes, you just get a shit car where nothing works and nothing will work....Maybe they are the cars that Ted Ballieu should target for his 'crushing' campaign...

[VYMAD]

Well, Cav, bit of bad luck there, mate. My missus bought a Kia Rio, and, by God, don't get me started on "ISSUES WITH DEALERS."
I'm surprised to hear about the tyres scrubbing out on the VE's, because I have a VY with 120,000 k's on her and get even tyre wear front and back AND never had a wheel alignment! Will get one next tyre change, though. I know the VT'S and maybe VX, too? Had a major rear wheel camber issue, so yes I'm surprised they went downhill after VY and probably VZ. That would sure piss me off also that Holden won't release the code for non factory gas installs, but, there we go again-DEALERS.........................................

[Josheh]

Should have brought a Hybrid and done it, I'm pretty sure it's the earths fault your tyres where buggered, Karma mate, Karma... You're Slowely killing our planet...

Just kidding

[Reaper]

Well picked up Grennan

Maybe I'm just naive.

On reflection, apart from 4WDs, there were no new cars crossing the Nullarbor.....

Plenty of old Falcons and Holdens though

And this is the point of my 'ridiculously long story' .... new cars just don't cut it anymore!

There is nothing wrong with the after market gas system. It's just that Holden knows there is a software bug, and has a fix it for its own gas cars, but refuses to release the fix even to its dealers.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me!

I will be having words with the dealer soon.

BTW The tyres wore out in 2,000kms - just look at the pictures.

The moral of the story?

The Commodore can't complete a crossing of the Nullarbor if it is carrying an average load of two people and their luggage

I did it twice in a (then) new VYII loaded to the hilt towing 2 boats with no issues. I wouldn't hesitate doing similar trips in a VE.



Since changing over to the VE (I'm now on my second - do way too many km ) I have found rear tyre wear to be much improved over the VT-VZ bodied cars. It generally regarded as good as anything on the road. Are you sure the wheel alignment was ok??? From experience it doesn't take much more than a fast(ish) heavy thump over a railway line for it to go out of whack which could easily happen in country driving.

As for your fuel thing, I would say it's up to the gas system manufacturer to have a system to suit the car rather than GM make a car to suit every after market gas system out there. I don't know the reasons why they won't release the patch for the computer however I'm sure they have their reasons.

Hope you enjoyed your trip, issues not withstanding.

Reaper

[danja]

I enjoyed the narrative, lengthy as it may be. I can think of plenty of people who'd just write "yo juz crossed oz an my tyres n fuel thin is all whack wat u fink the prob iz?"... I know which version I prepare - this one even had pictures and everything!

I imagine there is a rather dull but understandable reason why Holden won't release these gas-related software updates yet, possibly there is some testing they need to do, or there are issues with aftermarket systems.

As for the tyres, I can only think it might be bad alignment and/or incorrect pressure. Commodores have never had adjustable camber, at least certainly not since the VT - it's always been an adjustment that needed an aftermarket kit. Some models have automatic ride levelling, basically a sensor to determine how loaded the car is, and some airbags which get pumped up to compensate. Sounds like airbag suspension might be in order for your car next trip you take, help keep the camber in check?