A fault for the pre-crash safety systems on your car is more likely to be centred around the sensors that determine your distance from the car in front, speed, brake application, and forces acting on the car at that moment. Perhaps a faulty fuel sensor could be part of that problem, but possibly not the root cause. It’s hard to imagine that a fuel sensor could be telling the car it’s about to crash. You really need to find out the number of the fault code that’s being thrown and work it out from there.

These safety systems can usually be reset at a dealership or switched-on independent workshop. The cost will vary, but it’s important to have these systems working properly to ensure the car can be legally used on the road and that your insurance company won’t desert you should the unthinkable happen while a major safety system is on the blink.

Meanwhile, the timing belt on the turbo-diesel engine fitted to this series of Prado does, indeed, require replacement at 150,000km or every five years, whichever comes first. So, even if you haven’t covered that distance yet, the five years are definitely up and you should change the belt to avoid it failing and destroying the engine in the process.

If however, the engine in your Prado is the much less common 4.0-litre V6 petrol, then it doesn’t have a timing belt at all. Instead, this engine uses a timing chain which should be good for the life of the vehicle.

This is a pretty well known problem with the three-litre turbo-diesel that Toyota was fitting to Prados between 2009 and 2014. The problem began when Toyota redesigned the pistons of the engine to help it achieve Euro 4 emissions standards. Earlier versions of the motor that didn’t comply with Euro 4 did not have the same problem.

The piston cracking most commonly occurs once the engine has covered something like 100,000km or 150,000km. It was also most likely to occur in engines that had been modified to produce more turbo-boost or vehicles that had been used for extended periods of towing heavy loads.

Toyota did issue a service bulletin for the problem and began fitting post-2014 engines with different fuel injectors and a revised piston design. Piston failures in these later engines are rarer but still not entirely unknown. Even though a service bulletin was issued, Toyota did not issue a recall for the affected vehicles.

The first thing to check is the level of the transmission fluid. If this is incorrect, it can cause all sorts of drive and shifting problems. Also, how long since this vehicle had its automatic transmission serviced? We tend to forget that these hard working components benefit from a periodic change of filter and fluid and a general check-up to make sure there’s nothing that needs adjusting inside the gearbox.

The reason the transmission begins to feel better after it’s warmed up is possibly to do with the temperature of the fluid and the friction surfaces inside the transmission. When the gearbox and fluid are cold, the fluid is thicker (and harder to pump) and can’t lubricate or operate the transmission as effectively. Even so, the gearbox should not shift harshly even when it’s cold. When it does, it’s trying to tell you something.