Toyota Problems

Boy, there’s a big difference between a Toyota CH-R and an Isuzu MU-X, Kathy. Rarely would both those models make it to the same short-list. In any case, the problem you’ll face is that buying any brand-new car involves waving goodbye to a large chunk of its residual value the same day you drive it home for the first time.

Who is advising you to get rid of the Toyota? I’ve seen plenty of V6 Toyotas with more than 300,000km showing and still going strong. And if the mileage does worry you, what about finding a low-kilometre second-hand Aurion and pocketing the many thousands of dollars you’ve saved by not buying a brand-new car? You already know you love the way the Aurion drives (and its reliability is beyond question) it’s big enough for grand-kids and it’ll handle its share of dirt-road action.

If you can’t find an Aurion, a V6 Camry is a good alternative, offering a similar level of interior space, performance and lots of value for money. A later-model example will also have side-curtain air-bags to protect rear-seat passengers. And when the word honesty is used in the context of cars, a Toyota Camry is one of the first mental images to appear.

A Volkswagen Golf that is already one year old will already have done a big chunk of its depreciating. The Corolla, on the other hand, will – like all brand-new cars – dump value like crazy. That said, both cars have a fair way to go in depreciation terms. Keeping them for just a year won’t help there, either, as you’ll effectively be maximising the amount you lose.

The trade regards the Corolla (as a Toyota) very highly and, as such, resale values tend to be better than a lot of cars. The VW Golf, meanwhile, still suffers from the stigma of the reliability problems many owners experienced and can be a little more difficult to unload without resorting to selling it to a wholesaler who will make you really understand what depreciation means.

I don’t think this is an isolated problem, Andrea, as I’ve heard of exactly the same thing happening to other 200-Series Toyotas. From the look of things, this type of recurring limp-home-mode problem with the LandCruiser is usually down to one of three things.

The first is a damaged or faulty stepper motor which controls both the throttle and the variable vanes on the turbocharger. Sometimes the vanes can become stuck, refuse to budge and burn out the stepper motor’s electronics in the process. If there’s a problem with any of those components, the stepper motor – at the very least -t will need to be replaced. The advice there is to use the genuine Toyota part, not a cheaper copy.

The second possibility is a fault with the EGR valve, and the third is a faulty accelerator pedal which, unlike older cars, does not connect via a cable to the throttle, but ends an electronic signal to the car’s computer. Any glitch here can send the car into limp-home. The fact that you’ve had problems while in cruise control makes me suspect either the accelerator or stepper motor, so they’d be the components I’d be checking first. For what it’s worth, I reckon the police-scanner explanation is a load of rubbish.

The Ford Escape plug-in should be an interesting vehicle when it arrives, with 165kW of power and something like a 50km electric-only range. It will be here sometime this year, but the exact timing is still a trade secret.

The Toyota RAV4, meanwhile, isn’t a plug-in hybrid, so it can’t be recharged form your home solar panels (which the plug-in Escape could be). Frankly, if you’re making four times the power your household needs with your solar array, you’re in the pound seats for owning a plug-in hybrid which could put that excess electricity generation to very good use. That’s especially true if most of your driving is around town within a 20km radius or so of home-base.

That said, the new RAV4 Hybrid is gaining rave reviews as well as recording very sharp real-world fuel-economy figures. But a plug-in hybrid in a household with excess solar capacity could almost be run for free.

I haven’t heard of this one before, Brooke, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in other Klugers, rather that other owners don’t find it as annoying as you clearly do. I have to agree with the dealer, though, in that conditioning the leather regularly would keep it supple. Chances are that the harder the leather becomes (with age and UV radiation) the more likely it is to squeak. Conditioning the seats will ensure they don’t split, too. Perhaps there’s a conditioning product that is designed specifically to stop squeaking leather, although from what I can see on most labelling, the majority of them already claim this as one of the product’s qualities.

I can understand why you might not want to spend all your time in the car with one seat folded down (Klugers are usually bought for their passenger-carrying abilities, after all) but perhaps carefully placing a soft cloth or old towel between the offending bits of leather really would do the trick. But here’s a tip that has been proven to work in the past: sprinkle a little baby powder on the offending sections of leather. It seems to work for leather shoes, so perhaps it will work in a Toyota.

You really need to go out and test drive both vehicles, because they both have their plusses and minuses and those will be graded according to your personal preferences. Overall, the RAV4 is a bigger vehicle (almost as big as the original Kluger, in fact) so that might come into the reckoning based purely on the size of your parking space at home.

The RAV4 rides a bit more softly but your choice of the range-topping VTi-LX in the Honda is a good one because that’s the only model in the line-up that includes autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping and adaptive cruise-control. That said, the RAV4 has all those features, too, but extends them to the bulk of the models offered, not just the top-spec version.

On warranty and fuel economy, both compare pretty closely, so it will come down to the little things that you personally find important; things like the Honda’s doors that open almost to 90-degrees and the Toyota’s vast rear seat legroom and cavernous luggage space. Over to you.

This does seem to be a bit of a problem with Prados of this vintage, Steven. Sometimes the screen goes blank, other times the touch-screen won’t respond to input. Or, as in your case, the radio just doesn’t want to wake up when the ignition is turned on.

There are specialists out there who deal with these specific problems and seem to get really good results. Clearly, since the problem is a known one, some people have taken the time to conjure up a fix. There’s sure to be a specialist repairer near you in Queensland.

I’m inclined to think your tyre store might be right, Anthony, and heavy vehicles like the Prado, especially if they’ve been used of-road can, in fact, damage their own rims to the point where the wheels aren’t perfectly round any longer. It would have been pretty obvious to the people fitting the tyres when the new tyres were balanced; the out-of-round rims would have made balancing them almost impossible. Don’t be fooled by the fact that the wobble happens at speed, because that’s simply a function of the harmonics in the wonky wheels building up to the point where you can feel it.

However, to answer your second question, yes, there are some other things to check before rushing out and buying new rims. Is the vehicle lifted on its suspension? If so, there’s a very good chance the wheel alignment settings (particularly the castor angle) can be thrown out. This needs to be corrected to maintain the vehicle’s stability at speed, and a wheel-wobble can sometimes show up as a symptom.

How are the suspension linkages and bushes generally? Worn bushes can easily cause a vehicle to wobble at speed, as can bent bits and pieces from off-road use. Another thing that can throw a wobble into the equation is an out-of-balance tail-shaft or worn CV joints and universal joints in the driveline (of which there is plenty in an all-wheel-drive Prado).

But if it is your wheel rims at fault, there’s probably not much else you can do but replace them. Sometimes a steel rim can be re-rolled or trued, but alloy wheels (which is probably what you have) are often throwaways once they’re bent out of shape.

It all depends on how much below 2000kg, Jenny. The highest towing limit I could find for any 2019 RAV4 variant – the GXL 4X4 model – was 1500kg, well shy of your target limit. And to be honest, I think that even if you could find a mid-sized SUV with the legal ability to tow anything like 2000kg, you’d be stretching the friendship. It’s not all about engine power, after all; the mass of the towing vehicle itself and its footprint on the road also comes into the reckoning. I’ve seen plenty of medium SUVs towing loads that are, in practical terms, too heavy for them, holding up traffic and making a holiday vastly less fun than it should be.

You’re probably better to go shopping one size bigger and look at, say, the Toyota Kluger which can legally tow 2000kg and will give you a bit of performance headroom, making things safer and more relaxed on the road.