Its never news to learned that people deny themselves a whole lot of stuffs, and saved a bunch, to buy their new(I mean, foreign used) vehicles.

Such vehicles could be their first, or an addition, to existing ones.

But what has amazed me over the years, has being the immediate problems such vehicle (s) encounters, or develops, as it leaves the port of laden(Apapa), to a client's destination.

You'd hear stories of such vehicles either braking down due to engine or transmission system issues, a sudden development of some sort of "strange" problems.

Yeah, I know you might say these are used vehicles that could get to developed some faults along the way, considering it has being either purchased off an auction platform, or had being parked for a long time, from its country of purchase.

No one is ever happy, to spend extra funds on a purported "new" car, after purchases. It hurts, to realised on taking delivery of your first car to say, you begin to spend so much on repairs.

SO WHAT TO DO BEFORE TAKING DELIVERY OF YOUR CAR
1. RESEARCH. If you're a novice on cars, try as much as possible, to be informed about your vehicle of purchase.
This won't caused you much, in terms of resources. All you need to do is spend a few times on the internet, and research common problems embedded in your vehicle of purchase. Visit forums, and get to read what other car owners are saying about the car. Is it something you could cope with, despite the information you may get there?

2. GETTING A DRIVER, to drive the car to your destination. If you're a novice not familiar with the Port, hire a driver that can assist with driving the car down to your destination.
This person, must be someone whom you could trust, and you know.
Don't send people, or mechanic(s) alone to take delivery of your car, if you have that gut feelings that they are not professional enough to undertake the tasks.

3. CAR INSPECTIONS FIRST! As you are at the port, and ready to take delivery of the car over there, its important you carry out few checks on the it, before driving it to your destination.

a). Ensure all fluids are intact (gauged). Don't ever assumed because a car was imported into the country, that gives it a clean bill of health. In some cases, and if you're lucky, your hypothesis could be correct.

Not carrying out basic fluids checks before even starting an engine, has costs vehicle car owners, untold pains, ranging from catastrophic mechanical problems, and eventual selling off of the vehicle at below purchase prices.

Fluids you could check spans from the engine oil, transmission system oil, brake fluids, and power steering fluids, if your car is equipped with such.

b). visually look at the brake pads, and/or brake shoes, to ascertain their lever of wear.
Guage mentally, if the pads/brake shoes ought to be replaced immediately, or afterwards.

Your safety should be paramount FIRST, before anything else.
Driving your car off the Port, without such checks amounts to a huge risks and a gamble with your life.

c). RETRIEVE CODES. There are various reasons why dashboard lights such as ABS, VSC, and check engine lights pops up. Some could be some form of intermittent fault, or a permanent error problem with the emissions, or power train portions of the vehicle.

Getting a small potable diagnostic tool, would helped you established a baseline, before driving off the car to your destination. That, would helped you in keeping track of the BEFORE codes, when the car came to your destination, and the AFTER, after every REPAIRS.

d). All other checks such as body paints, and a hosts of others can be done, if you got the time.



CASE STUDY(A STORY):
A client had to go through some terrible experiences, after an FX35 he asks his mechanic to take delivery of for him, OVERHEATED while driving.

A call was placed to him by the driver, and mechanic, informing him about the situation.
It was frustrating. How could a car that hadn't overheated abroad, suddenly got to this stage, was my question to the client.

His response was, "I really don't know too". In trying to helped this dude, I specifically told him to ensure that those guys don't connect the radiator cooling fans of the vehicle directly to the ignition system. He did relayed that information to them, but they did otherwise, and got the car(a Tokunbo), somewhere, to fix the overheating issue, according to them.

Eventually when the vehicle got home, owner had noticed that the cooling fans have being made to run off the ignition system, ad that made the car so noisy when idling.

MY DISCOVERIES WHEN I GOT TO SEE THE VEHICLE:
1. Radiator cooling fans were made to run, immediately the ignition system was turned on. Further checking, I shockingly realised that the power feed to the fans were sourced from one of the ignition coil circuits. This would definitely caused a lot of driveability problems for the car.

2. Radiator reservoir, had no cover (cap) on it.
A car's cooling system is supposed to be pressurised, and not left exposed to the atmosphere.


THE FIX
1. In situations like these, you got to be patient enough to reasonably identify where the problem is, developed a planned action to fix the issue.

2. Tried as much to in detail, get as much information from the client, in how the vehicle had overheated.
Always listen attentively to clients when they tell you about their vehicles.
A lot of information that could helped you in any fixes, are hidden in their complaints.

3. Undoing the mess those guys have created on the car's cooling system, was not easy.
Here are bunch of wire harnesses that were ripped off by these guys, that needs careful attention to details here(you need to be familiar wit the colour codes of those wires that were cut and joined to some sets of heavy-duty relays).

4. Get to be familiar with the uses of digital test meters. It helps you not involved in guessing what wires or not are the powers/grounds in the circuits.
A wrong connections, could damage the vehicles integrated power modules and the ECU via short circuits.

Leaving it exposed without its cover, would sped up rate of evaporation of coolants, and allowing the presence of air bubbles, which are the must causes of overheating on vehicle engines.

5. Your code reader comes into play here.
Connected the code reader, started the car, and went straight to the REALTIME READING. This would show you realtime info about the various PIDs such as ETC°, RPM values, etc. My main interest was the engine coolant temperature.

After the radiator cooling fans were returned back to factory fittings, the huge noise from the fan stopped, and the temperature of the engine was below the middle indication mark.

6. Do not forget to wrapped all the cut wires with an electrician's tape, to prevent exposed wires to corrosion.
Exposing wires to corrosions, would caused erratic problems.


WHAT ACTUALLY CAUSED THE OVERHEATING?
From my tests, and fixes, the MAJOR REASONS the engine overheated was because of the ABSENCE OF A RESERVOIR COVER, and NOT BLEEDING THE VEHICLE ACCORDING TO NISSAN'S BLEEDING PROCEDURES.


CONCLUSION
Carrying out little research on your potential vehicle, and some basic vehicle checks, would go along way in having issues with your "new" vehicle.

Get to employed the services of drivers/mechanics you can trust know the job before taking delivery of your car.




PS: Whenever you cone across with any modern vehicle running with it's electric radiator cooling fans connected to the ignition system, just know its either there's an UNDERLYING OVERHEATING ISSUES. This is absolutely different for engines such as those with mechanical viscous fans attached to their engines.




Regards.

Notice the radiator reservoir by the left has no cover on it.

Holding a connector to one of the radiator cooling fans.

Undoing all the connections that were made on the radiator cooling fan circuits.

That's the FX 35 with a digital test meter closed to the firewall of the car.

TRYGO:
Notice the radiator reservoir by the left has no cover on it.

I was of the impression that the radiator reservoir is not pressurized. Are you sure that was what caused the overheating?

rationalmind:


I was of the impression that that radiator reservoir is not pressurized. Are you sure that was what caused the overheating?

They aren't, I believe. If they were, you'd know by opening the cap after a drive.

HeavenlyBang:


They aren't, I believe. If they were, you'd know by opening the cap after a drive.

My thoughts too.

If it were the radiator cover then that's a recipe for disaster. I think it was pipedream who drove without a radiator cover and blew his engine

Hi Trgo,

Nice post and very informative indeed.
Can you send me your contact details on WhatsApp?
Kindly contact me on 08033086206 please

Dadaa:
Hi Trgo,
Nice post and very informative indeed. Can you send me your contact details on WhatsApp? Kindly contact me on 08033086206 please

Sure! My contact details are on my signature.
08066643532(WhatsApp/calls)