Toyota Problems

It sounds like part of the mechanism that operates the door latch has broken or melted or fallen off or in some other way failed. I’m not sure about the specifics of the rear doors on a 2006 Yaris, but the solution is to get inside the door and operate the latch mechanically to open the door. But that can be easier said than done.

If you can lower the window in that door, you might find a locksmith or specialist safe-breaker who can use a hook to manipulate the latch. But in many cases, the only solution is to remove the interior door trim to get at the broken mechanism. The problem there, of course, is that the door trim will be hard up against the door jamb and the rubber deals, so removing it can be a huge problem.

In some cases, you’ll be able to remove/lift one corner of the door trim to gain access, but I can’t guarantee that the trim won’t be damaged in this operation. Once it’s damaged, of course, all bets are off and you can cut a hole in the trim to gain the access you need to trigger the latch.

And the better news is that there are plenty of Yarises in wrecking yards waiting to give up their door trim to replace the one you’re about to butcher. And if memory serves, all Yarises had the same colour interior, so finding a matching door trim won’t be too difficult.

Hi Sam, I can’t offer financial advice as to whether a lease, car loan, or private loan will be preferable for your individual situation. Leases have been a great way to get into a late-model car while assisting your tax situation, though you do have to be aware of balloon payments due at the end of the lease term. Also consider the value of the car once you’ve racked up plenty of kilometres up and down the M1 freeway each day getting to Newcastle. I’d suggest speaking to an accountant or financial advisor first.

Because you’re looking at a car built before January 1 2019, the vehicle won’t carry Toyota’s current, upgraded five-year factory warranty. Instead, you’ll get what’s left of the three-year/100,000km factory warranty. In the case of a hybrid Toyota, that also includes eight years and 160,000km worth of cover for the batteries, so if the car you buy is just two or three years old, you’ll have anything up to six years of warranty on the battery-pack. That’s a pretty good deal.

The catch is that the car you buy must have a full service record that shows it has not been neglected in any way. If the service record has gaps in it, Toyota has the right to cancel the warranty on that particular vehicle.

Modern hybrids are clever in that when a battery cell fails, only the dud cell (rather than the whole battery-pack) needs to be replaced. Our experience, too, in this department is that Toyota hybrids are hitting wrecking yards (thanks to crashes) faster than they’re wearing out their battery-packs. That means there’s a decent supply of second-hand batteries with lots of life left in them at reasonable prices. One quote for a second-hand Prius battery-pack was between $1500 and $2000 from a wrecking yard.

Let me guess, you did an oil change 12 months ago using semi-synthetic oil and then another one six months ago using fully-synthetic. And now, there’s just enough oil left in either container that, if you combined them, you could do the next oil change without buying more oil. Am I close?

Anyway, the short answer is no, you shouldn’t mix two different types or grades of oil. Remember the old Castrol TV ads; Oils aint oils? Well, it should have been: Oils aint just oils. Oil isn’t just refined crude; a modern automotive engine oil is made up of lots of components, collectively referred to as additives. These additives make oil more effective at both high and low temperatures as well as providing extra protection and sometimes even a cleaning function.

Which is great, but the different additives in different oils sometimes don’t get along too well when they’re mixed. Sometimes they can cancel each other out, at which point you’re suddenly using oil that doesn’t protect as well as it should.

Keep the spare oil from each oil change as a top-up (something you probably won’t need in a relatively new Toyota Camry). And if it’s not needed for that, give the poor old lawn-mower an oil change with the left-overs. How long since the mower or brush-cutter got some love?

Hi Rebecca, generally 100,000km isn’t a concern on rugged off-road vehicles like Toyota’s retro-cool FJ Cruiser, as this has been spread out over five years now and most people will rack up at least 20,000km per-year. The crucial aspect to this is whether the FJ has a full service history (major services happen every 80,000km and 100k kilometres), and whether the bulk of those kilometres were done around town in stop-start driving, or on longer trips which cause less strain on mechanical parts. In most cases parts won’t simply start falling off once you hit 200,000km and a well looked-after FJ should be able to reach over 300,000km before major components will need to be reconditioned. As to the value I have seen sub-100,000km-old examples listed as low as $32,000 and some as high as $45,000 so it will come down to the individual FJ’s history. I would definitely have a look at the prices around Australia as you might find bargains a short road-trip away.

I’d go for the Rukus every time. And that’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with the Nissan Cube, but it was only sold here as a private import with all the insurance, servicing and spare-parts hassles that can bring with it.

But besides all that, the Rukus is, mechanically speaking, the previous-generation Toyota Camry, built on a Corolla platform with a super-useable boxy body. So, as well as being amazingly practical, it should also be a zero-hassle ownership experience. The Rukus might not have the pizzazz of the Nissan, but it’s the one to buy second-hand.

By 1998, the LandCruiser had gained bigger brakes and a bigger wheel and tyre combination, making these later versions the best for towing. Pre-1995 versions were limited to towing 2500kg, but the upgrade took that limit to 3500kg which is still competitive even today. The transmission makes no difference to this limit.

You’ll have to buy a regular road wheel and tyre of the same size as are on the car.

I’ll assume you had a good poke around the various settings menus before contacting us, Sweta, so I’ll skip that part of the advice. But from what I can gather, your privately-imported car may not actually have the functionality to switch to an English-language format.

Different markets have different specifications for this and sometimes the same vehicle can be built in two (or more) different factories around the world. Certainly, if the car you own had been destined for a market outside Japan, it would have had multi-lingual abilities. But, if it was only ever destined for the Japanese home market, there’s a big chance it only has Japanese programmed into it.

If that’s the case, you might find you need to change the entire head unit. That might be wise anyway, as some Japanese radio stations operate on a wave-length that isn’t used in Australia. Basically, this is another of the pitfalls of parallel-imported cars.