Mechanic in Gordonvale

The Gillies is the local particular

Gordonvale sits at the bottom of the Gillies Range, and if you go up and down it with any regularity your car is doing something most cars in this region never do.

The climb is sustained load: the engine and, on an automatic, the transmission both work hard for a long stretch with limited airflow, so cooling systems and transmission fluid get tested properly. The descent is the other half, and it is the one that matters more. A long descent is sustained braking, and sustained braking puts heat into the rotors, the pads and, through the caliper, into the brake fluid.

Brake fluid absorbs moisture out of the air over time, and fluid with water in it boils at a lower temperature. Fluid that boils on a descent gives you a pedal that goes long or goes to the floor, and then feels perfectly normal again ten minutes later once it has cooled. It is the most commonly dismissed serious fault in the trade, and the Gillies is exactly where it shows up.

Fluid moisture content is testable rather than a matter of opinion. If you use the range often, it is worth having done, and it is covered on the brake repairs page. Using a lower gear on the way down rather than riding the brakes is free and does more good than most things anyone can sell you.

Cane rail, and what crossings do

The cane railway runs through Gordonvale, and level crossings are a suspension test. Repeated impacts at crossings work on bushes, shock absorbers and, over time, exhaust mountings.

None of that is dramatic and none of it happens quickly. It is the kind of gradual wear people stop noticing because they adapted to it as it happened, and it usually gets found when a car goes through a safety certificate inspection and fails on a leaking shock or a perished bush that has been that way for a year.

Water across the flats

The Mulgrave flats take water in the wet, and every year some cars go through more of it than their owners intended.

For a normal car the risk is the engine air intake, and the rule is simple: if water reaches the intake the engine can draw it in, and water does not compress. That is a destroyed engine, not a repair, and it happens in the space of one revolution.

For a four wheel drive the risk is quieter and more expensive over time. Differentials and transfer cases are vented, and driving a hot diff into cool water contracts the air inside it and pulls water in through the breather. The oil comes out looking like milky coffee, the bearings fail over the following weeks, and by then nobody connects the two events. If you have been through water at any depth, get the diff and transfer case oils checked. It is a cheap check and the 4WD servicing page covers what to do about it, including extended breathers for vehicles that do it regularly.

Ring and tell us what the car is used for. A Gordonvale car that never leaves the flats and one that does the range twice a week need different attention, and the odometer will not tell us which is which.