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.

The Hilux 4WD would give you better offroad ability and more load carrying capacity, and shouldn’t suffer on the fuel consumption or power fronts, but your budget would dictate an earlier model in the region of 2014.

It’s an electric/petrol hybrid. It’s safe and reliable, and it does charge the battery while driving. 

As an estimate if it’s got a petrol engine it would be $20,000-$25,000, it the engine is a diesel it would be $29,000-$33,000.

 The top-of-the-line Grande did, but the GX and GXL didn’t.

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.

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.