Toyota Problems

Rather than concentrate on a particular brand, the best advice is to find a vehicle with a full service history and signs that it has lived an easy life. Too often, commercial vehicles like vans are bought by their first owner and used and abused. They’re nearly always purchased with a job in mind, and that job can often wreck them or at least shorten their lives.

Sometimes, the down-time associated with proper servicing means that maintenance is skipped, other times the sheer weight of the cargo being carried puts a lot of strain on mechanical components. A van that has been used by, say, a pool chemical company might have been exposed to highly corrosive chemicals every day of its life and could be hiding lots of rust. Even a florist’s van might have every nook and cranny filled with potting mix, waiting to become damp and start the rusting process.

Another good idea is to buy a van that has already been converted to a camper. This conversion is not an inexpensive process, so letting the previous owner spend the money is a terrific concept. Keep an eye on the classifieds for a van that has done a tour of duty with a grey nomad or van-lifer, and is now up for sale as the owner moves on to something new.

This could be a fault with the engine and/or transmission but it could just as easily be a fault with a sensor or even a poor earth or other electrical connection somewhere in the vehicle. Scanning the vehicle should show up any faults the on-board computer has logged.

The fix? That’s easy: Your car is still covered by the factory warranty, so Toyota is obliged to make things right. Take it back to the dealer as it’s Toyota’s problem, not yours.

While it’s much less common to see a leaking rear main seal these days, it’s certainly not unheard of and definitely not an impossibility. While ever cars have seals and gaskets, they can fail, even if it’s not a common occurrence.

The rear main oil seal is the one located at the rear of the engine and is designed to allow the crankshaft to spin inside the engine without leaking oil through the rear main bearing to the outside world. When this seal wears or becomes hard with age and heat cycles, oil can get past it and that’s when you’ll start to find oily patches on the driveway under the car.

This seal is sandwiched between the engine and gearbox, so it’s quite a bit of work to separate those two components to gain access to the seal and replace it. It can easily be one of those $5 parts that costs $1500 to replace.

But before you commit to this, you need to make absolutely sure the rear main seal is the culprit. The best way to do that is to thoroughly clean the engine to remove any oil and then take it for a drive where it gets fully up to temperature. From there, you should be able to see where the oil is coming from and whether that place is the rear main seal. It might take a couple of journeys before the oil leak starts to show up again.

Don’t be surprised if the leak actually turns out to be from some external plumbing or even a seal or gasket at the back of the engine near the top, where the oil is escaping, running down the back of the engine and appearing to come from the rear main seal. Oil leaks can be tricky little devils, so take the time to diagnose the source carefully or you may find you’re replacing a seal that is perfectly fine. At which point you’ll have spent your money and still have an oil leak.

This raises a very interesting question, so I checked the status of the Camry’s AEB system with Toyota Australia. The first thing I learned was that every current-model Camry is fitted with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB). That is, the vehicle will apply its own brakes to avoid you running into an object in front. 

So why didn’t the AEB save you this time? There are a couple of theories within Toyota. The first is that, ironically, you might not have been going fast enough. The Camry’s AEB works only at speeds over 10km/h (up to 180km/h). So, it’s still classed as City AEB. But if you were trickling along at walking pace in stop-start traffic, you might not have been going fast enough to trigger an AEB response.

But it’s also interesting that you say your foot slipped off the brake pedal. There’s speculation that the AEB system will only operate if it thinks the driver has missed an obstacle. But if you were braking, the system may have interpreted that as you being in full control and has therefore left the AEB dormant.

The Camry also has Brake-Assist (BAS) technology where the car will detect a potential crash and apply extra brake pressure if your foot isn’t already applying enough. But that system only works above 30km/h, so if you weren’t travelling that fast, again, the system might not have been called in to act. And, again, there’s the question of your foot slipping off the brake pedal at a point in proceedings where there simply wasn’t enough time for the AEB or BAS to intervene.

You can check out the Carsguide website for full safety specifications on a huge range of makes and models available in Australia. But you might find other cars in the same situation as you’ve described would have behaved exactly as your Camry did.

I agree that the requirement to change hoses with just 30,000km on the odometer sounds like overkill. But bear in mind that those 30,000km probably involved 1000 heat-cycles (where the engine is heated when started and cooled when you stop). And that’s the sort of thing – along with time – that will make components like hoses deteriorate. And that’s the key to this: Time also plays a part in the way materials like rubber degrade in a car’s engine bay.

So, it’s not as simple as Toyota’s engineers having worked out that a car’s hoses need replacing at 75,000km. They’ve also taken into account those effects of time passing. And that’s why the hose-change interval might be 75,000km or three years, whichever comes first.

If your car was still covered by factory warranty, I’d say you’d be mad to skip the hose change and risk voiding the warranty if anything went wrong related to those hoses. But since your car came with a three-year warranty when it was new, that has now expired.

And with that in mind, maybe it’s time to seek out a specialist workshop that isn’t a Toyota dealership and see what it says about the condition of the hoses and whether they need replacing or not.

I’m not saying you’re being unnecessarily upsold or gouged on this service, but it’s worth asking to see the factory service schedule that dictates the hose change you’ve been quoted on. If the workshop can’t produce it, then I’d be going elsewhere.

The short answer: No. The 2005 Camry four-cylinder was rated to tow only 1200kg (with trailer brakes fitted). Even the three-litre V6 version of the Camry was rated to 1600kg.

So, even with the caravan you’ve nominated absolutely empty (no water, luggage or food supplies on board) it would still be way over the Camry’s limit. Ignoring these limits leaves you open to all sorts of potential legal and insurance hassles should something go wrong. You also stand to damage the towing vehicle by overloading it. Fundamentally, you need either a bigger car or a smaller caravan.

Poor Bluetooth quality and other connectivity issues have plagued Toyotas for years now. For a while there, it seemed as though Toyota might have gotten on top of the problems, but as your experience shows, clearly there are still issues.

In the first instance, you need to allow Toyota to try everything it can to make things right, including waiting on an upgrade to the Bluetooth system that will work for your car. Of course, that leaves you in the lurch in the meantime. When Toyota finally admits that they can no longer help you even though this is clearly a warranty claim, that’s when you need to call in the ACCC as, at that point, you’ve paid for something you haven’t got. Perhaps Toyota will agree to cover the cost of an aftermarket head unit (or a different brand of phone) that actually works in the Prado. In any case, something’s got to give or the vehicle is of no use (or at least limited use) to you in your line of work. Right now, there’s a class action in the USA for this exact problem. Although this legal action won’t apply to vehicles sold in Australia, it illustrates the depth of the problem. Sources also suggest Toyota has switched out some head units in US-market cars, so perhaps that will be extended to here.

It staggers me that a huge company like Toyota can’t get something as simple as Bluetooth connectivity right when pretty much every other car-maker around the world has this stuff sorted out. It’s not as though the Apple phone is an uncommon consumer choice, is it? In 2022, hands-free phone operation is a major selling point and to not have it (despite paying for it) is far from acceptable.

You have obviously taken this up with your dealer, but have you contacted Toyota’s customer service department at head office? You might make more progress going straight to the source rather than being fobbed off by a dealer.

Any time there’s rust on a Toyota LandCruiser from Western Australia, the alarm bells start ringing. And that’s because these vehicles are frequently used by the mining industry and lead very hard – and often very short – working lives. Salt water and acidic conditions in many mines means vehicles can have a very short life expectancy. Toyota works hard to rust-proof its vehicles, but mine work will still often overcome those efforts.

The problem, as you’ve already identified, is that the person you eventually try to sell the vehicle to will be hearing the same alarm bells, and the vehicle may be difficult to on-sell even if the rust is merely superficial. That said, rust around the windows and underneath the car suggests that at the very least, the vehicle needs a close inspection by a specialist, and taking a punt on it doesn’t seem like a great idea to us. Perhaps an independent inspection by the RACWA would be a wise investment. I’d be finding out who the vehicle was previously registered to as a double-check.

Buying from a Toyota dealer should perhaps infer some kind of protection, but bear in mind that in WA, unlike a passenger car less than 10 years old, a commercial vehicle (such as a LandCruiser ute) does not come with any statutory warranty. Ex-mine vehicles are often sold relatively cheaply. Your current experience is why.

When it comes to Bluetooth Toyota Corolla hasn’t always had a great track record with its factory installations. For years, many Toyota owners complained that the Bluetooth fitted to their cars was lousy with poor connection, frequent drop-outs and a lack of calling clarity. These days, those problems have been addressed thanks to Toyota’s troubleshooting and the Toyota Bluetooth systems are more or less the same as everybody else’s.

Toyota Corolla Bluetooth pairing (for either iPhone or Android) is a pretty simply process and involves following the on-screen prompts in the phone setup menu after the car has 'found' your phone (make sure your phone is in 'discoverable' mode). From there, you need to confirm that the security code displayed on your phone matches the one on the screen and you’re good to go. Once you’ve worked out how to connect Bluetooth to Toyota Corolla the first time, the system should automatically recognise your phone from then on. If in any doubt, follow the instructions in the how to pair/how to connect phone a phone section of your owner’s manual.

There’s a very good factory website at https://www.toyota.com/connect/ that can lead you through a list of what phones and apps are compatible with Corollas of the last few years.

All the current model Corollas feature Bluetooth connectivity, with the 2019 upgrade also extending to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility across the board. The previous model Corolla (2012 to 2018) also had Bluetooth from the entry-level model up, and the Corolla before that (2007 to 2012) featured Bluetooth on all but the base-model Ascent version. Prior to that, Bluetooth was not a factory fitment on any Corolla, but many owners added it with an aftermarket stereo head unit for better music quality.