Toyota Coaster Problems

Toyota's Coaster mini-bus is 6990mm tip-to-tail.

This model Coaster bus was fitted with a 90-litre fuel tank. While that sounds like quite a bit, these vehicles are quite heavy (upwards of 2.5 tonnes) and are fitted with relatively thirsty diesel engines. As a result, you won’t be going more than about 500km between fill-ups, and that’s on the highway.

Add a trailer, roof rack or even drive into a headwind and fuel consumption can spike. But these vehicles have a great reputation for reliability and make great mobile-home conversion platforms.

These alarms work via small switches that physically detect whether the door is open or shut and also whether the door is locked or unlocked. It's a school-bus thing as that's what a lot of Coaster were used as and it's designed to alert the driver if any of his or her charges decide it'd be fun to open the rear door on the way to school.

Clearly, the door and its lock are not giving the bus the message that the door is shut and locked, so the first thing to check would be the little switches that control this message. You'll usually find them inside the door jamb where they're activated when the door is shut on them. But the rear of a vehicle is where dust tends to be drawn and settles, so the switches can sometimes fill up with dust at which point electrical contact is lost and the alarm doesn't know where it is.

You can buy a product in a spray-can called electrical contact cleaner. A quick spray of this along with cycling the switches manually a few times (with your finger or a chopstick or whatever) can sometimes restore normal operation. If not, you could be looking at a broken wire or some other kind of electrical problem in the dashboard or anywhere else along the wiring loom's path. But a quick fiddle with the relevant switch is a good first shot.

 The Toyota Coasters sold in Australia are rear-wheel-drive, not 4x4. There are companies which specialise in building 4x4 Coasters, however.

From the sounds of things, you need a vehicle that can accommodate the wheelchair as an actual seat in the car rather than having the chair folded and stored for the journey. With that in mind, a van or people-mover is by far the best best bet and the news is good, because there are plenty of choices. For a while there, people were converting Ford Falcon station-wagons for this task, but since the Falcon is no longer made, vans have become the new default vehicle to convert. Which makes plenty of sense.

There are specialist firms around that will carry out whatever conversion you require and tailor-make the ramps, lock-down points and grab-rails you need to make it work for you. Switched on companies will sit down with you and discuss your precise requirements and engineer something bespoke if necessary.

At the moment, the list of car choices is pretty long and includes the new Hyundai Staria, VW Caddy, LDV G10, VW Caravelle, Renault Kangoo, Renault Trafic, Hyundai iLoad, Mercedes-Benz V-Class, Toyota HiAce and, in case you need something really big, even the Toyota Coaster. Some of these companies are also registered as NDIS suppliers.

But don’t rule out a second-hand vehicle, either. There are websites around listing used wheelchair-accessible cars for sale. Some will be ex-taxis, but others can be relatively low-kilometre cars that might just have the exact layout you were looking for.

A Toyota Coaster with a manual transmission weighs in at 3715kg, while the automatic gearbox-equipped Standard model comes in at 3765kg. The Deluxe model comes in at 3780kg.

The Coaster is rated to seat up to 22 people.