New Member 2010 Aurion owner

[DanielFi]

Hello everyone in the forum, this is my first post and my first post in a while in any forum. My name is Daniel in Western Australia owning a 2010 Aurion as in title for about 2 and a half years now. I am very pleased with the purchase and find driving the Toyota very pleasant.

As in on past vehicles I have performed a lot of service maintenance and minor upgrades myself, and are now on the Aurion. I firstly for the kick in acceleration put in a K&N air filter, as if the Aurion does not have enough already. After doing over 100,00klms in here a while now I changed all spark plugs to NGK Irridium, and bought a 4lt tub of transmission oil more recently and swapped out only the fluid and did not do a complete change or transmission filter with dropping its pan. Seems to be still good and changes smoothly. And of course the motor oil needs be maintained / changed.

The main reason as to lurking on the forum and now joining was that I am about to change the stereo, and learning a lot from previous members whom have done this. I will endeavour to post this process with pictures in the appropriate section of the forum. Wish me luck. Dan.

 

[campbeam]

Welcome to the Forum.

As you would have found out changing the spark plugs is not simple. I assume that you would have selected and used long life iridium plugs.

If you look at previous posts for changing the ATF in the U660E transmission, Toyota refers to it as a strainer rather than a filter. I have dropped the transmission pan and changed the filter on my Aurion but did not do this on my standby project Aurion. 

I anticipate that you are looking after the engine with regular oil and filter changes. Plenty of posts about this topic on the Forum. 

Look forward to seeing your intended post on changing the stereo. Interested to hear which head unit you have selected. 

[DanielFi]

Thanks for the quick response 'campbeam', I have seen your signature on many many posts and this shows again that you and this forum are still very active.

I have been changing the oil before the 15,000 klm mark well and truly, with penrite HPR5, and ryco filter cartridge, made the mistake of not oiling the lowest o ring for the oil filter and now can remove the housing with a 3/8th drive without the filter tool at the drainer plug, don't worry I fix it next time. 

My Aurion has the smart bar on the front making it quite the long cruiser she is, adds a least half a foot to the length of the vehicle. She's a bit hard to park in the smaller parking bays with the turning circle that she's got.

I am already suffering buyers regret for the stereo, off ebay, an Android screen only model. I regret it simply as Chinese warranty does not exist today, and failure of these units is common, some time after install. I will likely keep the stock six stacker, Bluetooth, with front usb and reversing image unit for this reason. And avoid  hacking at the stock wiring harness. So it could be reinstalled. 

The other option was to do it properly with a name brand unit, missed out on the Xmas sales. The new head unit is arriving possibly late this week, my wife has not been informed , and I pray I am home when it arrives..

 

[campbeam]

59 minutes ago, DanielFi said:

I am already suffering buyers regret for the stereo, off ebay, an Android screen only model. I regret it simply as Chinese warranty does not exist today, and failure of these units is common, some time after install. I will likely keep the stock six stacker, Bluetooth, with front usb and reversing image unit for this reason. And avoid  hacking at the stock wiring harness. So it could be reinstalled. 

The other option was to do it properly with a name brand unit, missed out on the Xmas sales. The new head unit is arriving possibly late this week, my wife has not been informed , and I pray I am home when it arrives..

Looks like you are going to have some interesting times ahead swapping out units then probably again if the new unit fails. Best to start looking around for a decent name brand unit and hope it comes on special at EOFY or next Xmas sale.

Easy to give advice when it is other person's money, time and effort. 😁

[Tony Prodigy]

9 hours ago, DanielFi said:

Hello everyone in the forum, this is my first post and my first post in a while in any forum. My name is Daniel in Western Australia owning a 2010 Aurion as in title for about 2 and a half years now. I am very pleased with the purchase and find driving the Toyota very pleasant.

As in on past vehicles I have performed a lot of service maintenance and minor upgrades myself, and are now on the Aurion. I firstly for the kick in acceleration put in a K&N air filter, as if the Aurion does not have enough already. After doing over 100,00klms in here a while now I changed all spark plugs to NGK Irridium, and bought a 4lt tub of transmission oil more recently and swapped out only the fluid and did not do a complete change or transmission filter with dropping its pan. Seems to be still good and changes smoothly. And of course the motor oil needs be maintained / changed.

The main reason as to lurking on the forum and now joining was that I am about to change the stereo, and learning a lot from previous members whom have done this. I will endeavour to post this process with pictures in the appropriate section of the forum. Wish me luck. Dan.

 

Hi Daniel and welcome. Glad to have another Aurion owner/member here. Good to see you have a DIY approach too as this will not only save you $$$, but help you understand your car better as you go along. 

Don't hesitate to post and by all means upload pics too. It's nice to see what others are up to visually.

My 2 cents on head units, I'm not really into car stereos much these days, but if I had to, I'd look at a brand name and not waste my time with cheap Chinese junk. They are cheap for a reason and you will have no recourse if it fails. Too much rubbish is coming out of there these days and landfill can only take so much. Alpine, Pioneer, JVC, just a few good brands that come to mind. I was an Alpine guy back in the day and I still have some of my old components stashed away. Testament to quality, I decided to keep them rather than sell them with the cars I had at the time. Can't use them today of course, but I love nostalgia.

Regarding your oil service. We've spoken about this at great length here and a good rule to follow for the 2GR-FE is not to let it go beyond 10k or 6 months as they are prone to sludging. Use only high quality synthetic oil (5w-30) and you'll have no issues. Penrite, Nulon, Mobil 1, whatever you like. We wait till the specials and stock up. It's an ongoing gag we have here with our oil stashes. 😄. You'll find out.

Have a great day and take care. Hope to hear from you soon. 

[KAA]

Welcome to the forum Dan, As you see this is still a very active forum especially with Aurion's, I am sure if you play it right you can win the wife over for not telling her about head unit coming LOL but in case keep the car fob handy for a fast escape LOL

Many here have already have thread's up about head units they have including me, however I left it to the experts as playing with electrical these days and computers is well out of my league and not wanting to stuff anything up.

Let us know how it goes and good to have another Aurion lover in our forum mate

Keep Safe

KAA

[DanielFi]

Thanks to all for the responses, I told the wife today about the upgrade and she is not impressed for the wrong 'real' reasons. It may arrive this week or early next due to postage delays. Looking forward to the challenge of installing, and setting up. I hope I have all the cables, as the head unit is steering wheel learning ready, and I bought an Autopro video retention cable for the stock camera to still work, even though in the package a new reverse camera is included, and that the stock system uses a 6 volt trigger rather than 12 volt for the camera to be functional. I have looked into a small voltage step up device and varied resistive POT to adjust this step up device from 6-12 volts. I will rather keep the stock camera, than run from and tap into the wiring to the back of the car.

I have not purchased this yet and hope that when the car is running and charging its enough to trigger the stock camera onto the units (video).

Let the fun and games begin, ( when it arrives that is)

 

[campbeam]

On 2/7/2021 at 6:31 PM, DanielFi said:

I will endeavour to post this process with pictures in the appropriate section of the forum. Wish me luck. Dan.

Good idea to be taking before photos at each stage so you can check installation and recover if necessary. I do not always do this and plenty of times that I go over to my standby project vehicle to check. Hope all goes well with the installation.

9 hours ago, DanielFi said:

I told the wife today about the upgrade and she is not impressed for the wrong 'real' reasons.

Ooooh. Better get do it right so both of you will be impressed with the end result. If applicable, a fall back plan option can be to say "Yes Dear, you were right" 

[Tony Prodigy]

9 hours ago, DanielFi said:

Thanks to all for the responses, I told the wife today about the upgrade and she is not impressed for the wrong 'real' reasons. It may arrive this week or early next due to postage delays. Looking forward to the challenge of installing, and setting up. I hope I have all the cables, as the head unit is steering wheel learning ready, and I bought an Autopro video retention cable for the stock camera to still work, even though in the package a new reverse camera is included, and that the stock system uses a 6 volt trigger rather than 12 volt for the camera to be functional. I have looked into a small voltage step up device and varied resistive POT to adjust this step up device from 6-12 volts. I will rather keep the stock camera, than run from and tap into the wiring to the back of the car.

I have not purchased this yet and hope that when the car is running and charging its enough to trigger the stock camera onto the units (video).

Let the fun and games begin, ( when it arrives that is)

 

All good mate. I hope it all goes well. Post up some pics when you do.

Cheers 

[Bens101x]

On 2/7/2021 at 7:31 PM, DanielFi said:

Hello everyone in the forum, this is my first post and my first post in a while in any forum. My name is Daniel in Western Australia owning a 2010 Aurion as in title for about 2 and a half years now. I am very pleased with the purchase and find driving the Toyota very pleasant.

As in on past vehicles I have performed a lot of service maintenance and minor upgrades myself, and are now on the Aurion. I firstly for the kick in acceleration put in a K&N air filter, as if the Aurion does not have enough already. After doing over 100,00klms in here a while now I changed all spark plugs to NGK Irridium, and bought a 4lt tub of transmission oil more recently and swapped out only the fluid and did not do a complete change or transmission filter with dropping its pan. Seems to be still good and changes smoothly. And of course the motor oil needs be maintained / changed.

The main reason as to lurking on the forum and now joining was that I am about to change the stereo, and learning a lot from previous members whom have done this. I will endeavour to post this process with pictures in the appropriate section of the forum. Wish me luck. Dan.

 

 

[Bens101x]

Does your Aurion have the sports select transmission 6 speed ? 

[DanielFi]

On 4/23/2021 at 7:03 AM, Bens101x said:

Does your Aurion have the sports select transmission 6 speed ? 

YES