Mystery in Proton Perdana V6 Maintenance

In the year 2008 after the Malaysia Genaral Election, Malaysian folk may still remember there are tussle for the candidate for Terengganu Menteri Besar, when all the issue settle, the new elected Terengganu Menteri Besar had made a decision to replace the State Assemblyman car from Proton Perdana V6 to Mecerdes Benz, the reason given is the maintenance fee for Proton Perdana V6 is far higher than Mercedes Benz.



They have been some argument on the issue until the Prime Minister had step in to stop the conflict, but after a few month later, the oposition control state, Perak, also have made a decision to change all their State Assemblyman car from Perdana V6 to the latest model of Toyota Camry, the reason is same as because of Perdana V6 maintenance fee is too high.



First of all, I would like to stress that I would not like to discuss and argue on the politician issue, all I want to give is my very own opinion on why our national car Proton Perdana V6 maintenance fee is higher than those more establish car model.



Personally, I feel Proton Perdana V6 consider a good car if it is not the best, the car have all the leading technologies component bring from Mitsubishi Motor Corporation, Japan. And the engine of 6A12 can be consider one of the most efficient engine in the Mitusbishi series of engine, so why it have the maintenance problem.



The very main reason I think is the spare parts we use on it, let see my below analysis.



Frankly speaking, if you would like to buy the Proton Perdana V6 spare parts which is made in Japan or the OEM parts from Japan, the pricing is really not cheap at all. But Perdana V6 is branded as national car, with quite a lot of numbers of this car on the road in Malaysia, the local parts seller will start to source for a more cheaper replacement parts, which it may come from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia or India.

If we use the low quality parts for this type of car, we may save in the parts cost but the maintenance issue will be snow balling bigger and bigger after this.

Let us take for example, if we use a low quality oil seal on the engine side (Camshaft oil seal, timing oil seal or flywheel oil seal), it may cause some oil leaking from the seal side and the leaking oil may contact with the belting inside (Timing belt, fan belt etc), and it may cause the timing belt break out sooner than it lifespan. when the timing belt break out during driving, it may cause jam in the engine valve and if the fatigue is big, it may need to ovehauling the engine.

As we know V6 engine contain 2 engine block that design in V shape with 3 cylinder running in each block, for a basic head set gasket, thier contain items may doulbe up than the normal gasket set, they will be 2 pcs cylinder head gaskets, 2 pcs valve cover gaskets, 2pcs of inlet manifold gaskets, 2pcs of exhaust manifold gaskets, 4 pcs of camshaft oil seals, 6 pcs of spark plug seals, 24 pcs of valve stem seals and may be 18 pcs of valve cover seals gasket if you want to include it.

The fact is, do you know that the pricing for the whole head sets which contain all the above items for the China made product, is just about enough to buy 1 pc of cylinder head gasket for this same model which is made from Japan.

So if the foremen willing to use the best parts for the car, although the parts cost may be high, but it will save a lot of maintenance cost in the future. People who using Mercedes Benz normally use the best parts for their vehicle, thats why their vehicle is less maintenence problem when compare to others vehicle that tense to use low quality parts.