Toyota Problems

Simply assuming the problem is a dud sensor is a great way to replace a bunch of things that weren’t causing the problem. This needs to be diagnosed and the first step there is to have the car electronically scanned to see what faults the computer already knows about. From there, you can make a much more informed plan of attack.

That said, you may well be right and the problem is a crank-angle sensor or something to do with the throttle position sensor. But, equally, the problem could be with the car’s wiring (getting hot when the power is turned on) or the fuel pump, so making a guess and replacing that component is a great way to waste time and money. A scan is quick and cheap and the smart way to go on any electronically fuel-injected vehicle.

The first piece of advice here is to not drive the car at all until this problem is fixed. A car with faulty brakes is one of the most dangerous situations you can find yourself in, and it’s just not safe to even attempt to move it, even to relocate it on the driveway. The problem could get a lot worse very quickly, leaving you with no brakes at all. And even if it doesn’t get any worse, your limited braking capacity could make an emergency situation much, much worse.

The noise is probably not brake-line pressure escaping, since you don’t have falling brake fluid levels. At which point, my suspicion becomes that the brake master cylinder is at fault. This is a device that uses vacuum from the engine to assist you to push the brake pedal. If the diaphragm inside the booster fails, you will might hear the vacuum escaping, with a hissing noise. Even if the booster is intact internally, a simple hose that connects the booster to the engine could have split and caused the leak. Until it’s fixed, though, you won’t have full braking power and that’s, obviously, very dangerous.

If you want a very capable off-road vehicle with a good reputation for reliability, then the answer is probably yes. These were great vehicles and were actually phenomenal in the bush where it took a lot to stop them.

The better question is probably why you wouldn’t buy one, and in that case, the answers include high fuel consumption (the FJ Cruiser was only available with a petrol engine, not a diesel). The vehicle was also a bit on the small side inside and won’t hold all the gear a typical family would need for a week away camping. Also, the two-and-a-bit door layout means access to the rear seat is a bit limited.

There’s also the matter of not buying more vehicle than you need and, if you’re not planning to go off-road or outback touring, then the FJ Cruiser is overkill. They’re also getting a bit long in the tooth these days, but a well maintained example can still be ultra-reliable.

I’m amazed that you managed to find such a convoluted reset procedure, even if it only provides a temporary fix. You may well be right that this behaviour is linked to heat build-up, especially if it happens after several hours of driving.

It’s interesting that you mentioned the engine sometimes goes into limp home mode, because the transmission’s behaviour sounds a lot like it’s going into limp home mode, too. Limiting the gears the vehicle will select is a classic symptom of limp-home mode, in fact.

The real question then becomes, what’s causing it to do so. Limp home mode can be initiated any time the vehicle thinks that continuing to drive at full power or speed will do further mechanical harm. As such, there’s a huge range of things that will cause limp home mode to engage, including a leak somewhere in the turbocharger’s plumbing, low coolant level, low oil pressure, low fuel pressure, a faulty sensor and many more.

So the first job is to scan the vehicle and see what fault codes are thrown up by the computer. From there, you can home in on the actual problem and fix it. But without those codes, you’re kind of flying blind.

The usual procedure for flushing a cooling system is to drop the existing coolant (usually by disconnecting the bottom radiator hose) fill the system with distilled water and whatever flushing chemical the workshop uses, restart the engine, drive it around for a short time until everything is at operating temperature, dump the water and flush mixture and refill the cooling system with the proper coolant.

You can also simply flush the radiator (and not the rest of the cooling system) by disconnecting the radiator hoses and running a hose through the radiator, usually in the opposite direction the coolant flows. But this is a much more simplistic flush and doesn’t change the condition of the engine crankcase’s cooling passages.

It’s possible that the flushing process has loosened some rust or scale that then blocked the cooling system somewhere else (the thermostat is a prime suspect) and if that’s the case, the process needs to be repeated until the water coming out of the cooling system is nice and clean and not tainted with rust or scale or anything else.

Revving the engine to get the flushing mixture to do its job is not really a problem, but could also be achieved by actually driving the vehicle (which would also get it up to temperature faster). But, really, provided the temperature gauge hasn’t been allowed to move into the red zone, you shouldn’t have damaged anything. But you do need to know why the operating temperature of the engine is now higher after a cooling system flush.

Both the Toyota and Kia have good reputations for quality and durability, while the Chery is more of an unknown quantity in Australia. The important thing to remember is that the cars you’ve short-listed are all near-new vehicles, so they’ll have plenty of factory warranty left to run.

The best way to avoid clear coat peeling is to buy a car in a solid, rather than metallic, colour, which doesn’t generally have the same peeling problems. That said, modern paint technology is much better than ever before, so this is less of a problem than it once was. Protecting a car’s interior means parking it out of the sun in the hotter months. Although, again, the durability of interior plastics has come a long, long way in recent years.

If you’re going to keep the car for a few years and then trade it in on a new car, retained value is more important than any of your other concerns. And in that sense, the Toyota traditionally moves to the front of the pack.