2018 Toyota Land Cruiser Pricing and Specs

I agree that the requirement to change hoses with just 30,000km on the odometer sounds like overkill. But bear in mind that those 30,000km probably involved 1000 heat-cycles (where the engine is heated when started and cooled when you stop). And that’s the sort of thing – along with time – that will make components like hoses deteriorate. And that’s the key to this: Time also plays a part in the way materials like rubber degrade in a car’s engine bay.

So, it’s not as simple as Toyota’s engineers having worked out that a car’s hoses need replacing at 75,000km. They’ve also taken into account those effects of time passing. And that’s why the hose-change interval might be 75,000km or three years, whichever comes first.

If your car was still covered by factory warranty, I’d say you’d be mad to skip the hose change and risk voiding the warranty if anything went wrong related to those hoses. But since your car came with a three-year warranty when it was new, that has now expired.

And with that in mind, maybe it’s time to seek out a specialist workshop that isn’t a Toyota dealership and see what it says about the condition of the hoses and whether they need replacing or not.

I’m not saying you’re being unnecessarily upsold or gouged on this service, but it’s worth asking to see the factory service schedule that dictates the hose change you’ve been quoted on. If the workshop can’t produce it, then I’d be going elsewhere.

It could any number of things and the dealer should be able to identify and rectify the cause for you. It could be as simple as a faulty solenoid in the transmission, a problem with the car’s computer, or a dodgy electrical connection.

Talk to your dealer about it, but in the meantime we’ve asked Toyota for an explanation.