Toyota Problems

This hasn’t surfaced as a common problem, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in some instances. The HiAce rear axle should have seals on the actual differential centre as well as each axle. If these are failing continuously, there are a number of possibilities.

The first is that there’s something bent or damaged that is placing undue force or damaging the seal, causing it to fail prematurely. The second is that the seal (and its replacements) are from a dud batch of seals with either poor manufacturing tolerances or a flaw in the material from which they’re made. The third culprit would be a blocked differential breather which is not allowing the pressure inside the housing escape, and that pressure is causing the oil to be pushed out past the seals.

The kerb weight of the RAV4 you mentioned depends on whether it’s the two or four-wheel-drive model. If it’s the former, the kerb weight is 1690kg, if it’s the all-wheel-drive model, the kerb weight is 1775kg. I know you asked for tare weight, but the only difference between kerb and tare weight sis that tare weight is the mass of the empty vehicle with 10 litres of fuel in its tank, while kerb weight is the same empty vehicle but with a full tank of fuel.

Of perhaps more interest to anybody towing is the fact that the two-wheel-drive RAV4 can tow 480kg while the AWD version can cope with 1500kg. The 2WD Rav’s GVM, meanwhile, is 2185kg and the AWD’s is 2230kg. The two-wheel-drive RAV4’s GCM is 2665kg, while the all-wheel-drive’s GCM is 3730kg.

Some of this information is quite difficult to find (even if you have the owner’s manual) yet it’s crucial safety information and should be more readily available. Some car makers seem very coy about publishing GVM and GCM limits, possibly because they don’t always reflect well on the product’s ability to tow and carry a load at the same time.

Even though this model Camry has an official combined fuel consumption figure of 7.9 litres per 100km, the exact number of kilometres you get from each tank of fuel will depend hugely on how and where you drive the car. If your driving is all around the city and suburbs, you might average, say, nine litres per 100km. If it’s all freeway work, then that figure may tumble to as low as seven litres per 100km. Drive the car really gently and you might even get that figure to drop into the sixes.

In any case, the (higher) city figure means the Camry’s 70-litre fuel tank should take you around 750km before you need to fill up. On the highway, meantime, the same 70 litres should carry you almost 1000km before you need to start looking for a petrol station. In reality, of course, the only direction with such projections is down, and every cold start, traffic jam and headwind will take kilometres off those figures.

There are three ways of charging the Toyota bZ4X – two at home and one in public. The first is the cheapest albeit slowest method and uses a standard 240V powerpoint with the charging cable provided by Toyota. The 71.4 kWh battery with 64kWh of usable capacity takes 30 hours to charge from 10 per cent to 100 per cent, with average energy prices in Australia costing between 21 to 36 cents per kWh. Prices can depend on demand and which state you live in, though. Alternatively, owners can install an AC wall charger through a licensed electrician. On average, the cost of these ranges from anywhere between $800 and $2000, with additional charges to install. A 7kW unit will deliver 10 to 100 per cent charging in 10 hours, while an 11kW unit will deliver a 10 to 100 per cent charge in 6.5 hours. The cost to charge can be free if your unit is hooked up to solar power. Finally, a public DC charging station will deliver a charge of 10 to 100 per cent at the bZ4X’s maximum capacity of 150kW in approximately 45 minutes. Charges depend on demand and time of day, but as a general rule you should never pay more than $40.

It’s probably quicker and simpler to tell you what passenger and SUV hybrids Toyota DOES sell in Australia (as well as reducing the chance of missing some obscure, foreign-market variant). So, right now, that list is made up of the Toyota Yaris Cross, C-HR, Corolla Cross, RAV4, Kluger, Yaris, Camry and Corolla (the latter in both hatch and sedan formats).

It’s a bit surprising to find you’re having trouble getting parts for a Prius C as this model was sold here by Toyota between 2012 and 2020. It was more or less replaced by the Yaris Hybrid, or at least that’s how many buyers saw it. Toyota has one of the biggest dealership networks in the country as well as plenty of dealers in regional areas, and that remains one of the brand’s strengths as far as servicing and parts supply goes. By the way, now that that all new cars sold in Australia are imported, nearly all spare parts beyond normal servicing items (filters, belts etc) will also be imported.

The Toyota LandCruiser is one of those vehicles that defies conventional wisdom by being super long-lived. It kind of depends on which model LandCruiser you’re talking about, but if it’s a diesel-engined version, there’s every chance that it still has lots of life left in it at 320,000km.

That presumes, of course, that it has been serviced correctly and has not been used to drag an excavator on a trailer at 110km/h every day of its life. Any vehicle with this many kilometres needs a very careful pre-purchase inspection but, being a LandCruiser, the cost of this inspection is warranted where it may not be on many other makes and models.

This is a pretty well known problem with the three-litre turbo-diesel that Toyota was fitting to Prados between 2009 and 2014. The problem began when Toyota redesigned the pistons of the engine to help it achieve Euro 4 emissions standards. Earlier versions of the motor that didn’t comply with Euro 4 did not have the same problem.

The piston cracking most commonly occurs once the engine has covered something like 100,000km or 150,000km. It was also most likely to occur in engines that had been modified to produce more turbo-boost or vehicles that had been used for extended periods of towing heavy loads.

Toyota did issue a service bulletin for the problem and began fitting post-2014 engines with different fuel injectors and a revised piston design. Piston failures in these later engines are rarer but still not entirely unknown. Even though a service bulletin was issued, Toyota did not issue a recall for the affected vehicles.