pegaxs

It flops up and down when its off, has about 4" of slack before take up and ratrchets through about 6 clicks before the handle goes no further and when parked on even a slight incline, does not hold the vehicle. Toyota mechanic came out to look at it, diagnosed it as requiring a park brake adjustment and then proceded to quote me the "kidney and half your liver" price...

Does anyone have an idea here on how to adjust the handbrake cable on these vehicles. Took mine to the local Toyota stealership and they wanted me to sign away a kidney and part of my liver to put the car up and adjust the hand brake cable... Figured that someone here might have a service manual or has done it before... Google turned up nothing for me... Cheers!

Wash having a similar problem to this... car starts up and is very sluggish. Turning off A/C only helped a little. Once the car was warmed up and running, ran better. I thought just as a trial on my quest to find out why my car was like driving through custard on start up, i would do this MAF clean. Very easy to do. WOW! what a difference it made. The whole MAF sensor was coated in oil and crap. Cleaned it all off and now car runs like new again. Dont know why i never thought of doing this earlier. Just used to Euro cars at work that either use MAP or the MAF sensor cannot be disassembled as easy os this one for cleaning :) Thanks for the info.

15 years as a mechanic, one would hope i could correctly check oil levels by now :) Didnt know there was an oil level sensor though, I dont think oil level is the issue. It has got plenty... checked hot and cold. Although, i will check that is has a sensor for this, as it could be faulty as well. Real problem is that i dont know what sensors screwed into the block are the correct ones to check. I think i worked out what one is the VVT valve from the service manual, but for some stupid reason, i cant find any info on the oil pressure switch. Maybe i will just buy one and match it up. It cant be far from the oil filter housing. My only real major concern was big end bearings. Too worn out, they become over sized and just eat up and leak oil from the lube system. This would cause low pressure, but it wouldnt explain why i can turn the car off and straight back on and it works fine... Having not owned an echo before, i dont know much about them and what the common problems are. I dont know if the last owner was a good owner or crap owner. It has a "service due at:" sticker on it that says due at 100.K, but how many did it miss before that ? On a side note, how is this for getting one up on a dealer... When i bought this car i did a lot of reading on this forum and other places. I found this car in the local paper and went to speak to the car yeard about it. When i was there i noticed it had no books... Knowing it has no timing belt to be replaced at 100K i asked had it been changed ? Playing dumb shopper, the sales guy said he didnt know. I said well, its not getting close to 100K and i would need to get it changed. I said if he knocked another $400 off the already negotiated price to cover me getting the 100K service and timing belt done i would take it. He rang the service manager and asked "how much to get a timing belt changed on a car" the service manager didnt even ask what car and just said "bout $500, including parts and labour" He said ok, deal done. Day of pick up, i paid for the car and said to him.. "oh, by the way, these cars have timing chains and dont require them to be changed at 100K." Guess the jokes on me now... could need big ends! :P hahahah oh :(

Ok, a quick description. Last few days i have been driving my 2000 3dr echo (has about 101,000km on it) around and the oil light comes on. First time it came on i freaked out, pulled over to the side of the road as soon as i could and cut the ignition. Left the car for 5 mins and checked the oil level. Oil level was correct. No oil under car. no signs up the exhaust of excessive oil consumption. Started up, no light and drive it home (about 5km), no issues. Yesterday it happened again. I was driving much slower this time. so i pulled over and noticed the light flickered on and off a few times and then stayed off. I turned the car off anyway and checked the oil level again. Still fine. Car is over due for a service, but only by 1000km (not really enough to be clogging up filters and stuff.) It happened again today. Going up the westgate bridge in the middle of afternoon peak hour traffic.. I thought "screw it, im not getting stuck here, i dont care if the engine craps itself, at least get to the top and i can coast down." Well, it made it to the top, and down the other side, and to the fuel station. Interesting enough though that every time i ran over the "cats eyes" between lanes, the light would flicker off, then after a moment come back on. I got to the servo, turned the car off and started it again straight away. Thinking that if it was out of oil pressure, the light would come back on after restarting straight away. ie: engine hot causing oil pressure loss. well.. the light went out as normal and i started driving again and the light stayed out! On the way home, the light came on again when i was approaching home. So, it seems that the light only ever comes on after a long trip (30km or more, not to the shops and back.) Against my better judgement, i have driven it up the westgate bridge with the light on and it kept going and didnt change power or get all nasty and noisy like and engine with no oil. I cant tell if the engine is getting to hot as there is no temp gauge, just a temp "light" and that has never come on. So, my questions are: a: where the hell is the oil pressure switch... i found a few pressure/temp senders but dont know what one it is to test it or replace it. b: The dash light, is it a oil temp light as well perhaps ? what is this light trying to tell me exactly, no oil pressure or the oil is getting too hot ? (no owners manual for the car, 2nd hand.) c: anyone else have this issue ? What did it end up being ? d: does anyone have a pdf or something of the owners manual. I cant find out where my clock is (does it even have one ?) or if my model come with an imobiliser key. Its auto, air and power steering. Dont even know if its supposed to have central locking, because if it does, it's not working! :) Cheers! :)

Well... i can think of one con... was in the news today... http://www.news.com.au/story/0,,25133023-2,00.html Ouch.

This does not reset error codes. Sorry to be a pain in the ****. Error codes are only reset if they are cleared by a code reader (scan tool for Toyota) or if a certain drive cycle is completed without the error coming back. The light might go off on the dash after everything is plugged back in but a diagnostic code is still logged. You can turn it off, unplug everything in the car for 6 weeks, plug it all back in and the error code will still be there. The light may be off after your "special reset" but the error is still on the EEPROM in the ECU.

any idea on how to turn off said light once it is on? one might suggest a trip to the local dealer and a quick ecu reset would be in order. If a light comes up it would mean a diagnostic code has been logged. if it stays on after you have put the air cleaner box back on it would suggest that it would need to be cleared. only way to clear it from previous expereince would be to get the dealer to clear the fault code.

Photoshop's Aurion Bonnet... There is a TRD aurion i added the monaro bonnet scopps too in photoshop... i think it looks better then the others... but the liberty style would be my 2nd choice

How about adapting texting and chopstix buttons to the wheel ? and a USB port and an ipod dock... to much of an ask ?

They have a spring mechanism in them and like a double tongue in it to adapt to all cup sizes. $147 is highway robbery at the very least. Did you try asking where you got it from where it is ? I think you should be able to make something out of foam or rubber though and just cut it to shape. I was surprised even more after i bought my aurion and found it only had 2 cup holders in it full stop! Not used to that after working for landrover. they have like 14 of the bloody things in them. I have an idea though... if i get time to make something and test it, i will get back to you :) Oh, and dont let a cup holder ruin what is an awesome car!

OH! i so want it to be a flight data recorder! It is in a black box after all :) I was going to say ECU housing, but it seems weird that it has an external electrical plug that isnt "OBD II" Can we narrow it down to a year model ? It may be a year model change. 07 has it, 08 same model does not, as they may have changed the ECU type Perhaps parking sensor ECU ? can you trace any wires coming out of it ? if so, where do they go ? Rear speaker amp ? subwoofer driver ? (the range rovers used to have these tiny amps driving small sub woofers. dont ask me why, they just did...) Its probably a whole ECU dedicated to the round push to start button... car makers are weird like that someitmes... :D

take your rhs springs out and put them in the lhs :) if you didnt fit them, take it back to the place that fitted them and show them. ask them to swap them to level the car out. Or at least make sure they are seated correctly and nothing is fouling them If you are expecting all 4 corners of the car to sit exactly the same, you are going to have a very poor life worrying all about it. car suspension will always move around. it depends on springs age, shocks, surface they sit on, load in the car, passengers, tyre pressures, road just traveled, quality of spring material. It may be prefect this week, next week it may be out again. If you want it to be perfect all the time, better look at getting airbags fitted and get rid of the springs...

If a car ride about 10mm higher on the drivers side, this is pretty normal. When you install springs they should have marking on them to denote driver side and passenger side. This is an allowance for the driver sitting in the car. 90% of a cars life is spent with only 1 person in it. Or with the male driver and female co-pilot. Unless is on the wrong side of the car, or its so visible obvious it looks like its going to fall on its side, then its not much to complain about. It will usually settle after a few weeks when the new springs havesettled in. Just make sure though, then you have put the springs in that they are seated correctly at the top and bottom and not up on a lip or have any rubber mounts/pads folded over. Other then that, 10mm higher on the drivers side of the car is pretty normal.

Are we talking about speed limiting, like on the imported Skylines (capped at 140km/h) ? or rev limiting ?? 1: To remove rev/speed limiter would require some form or firmware hack for the ECU or a modification to interrupt the signal to or from the ECU and fool it into thinking it was doing something it wasnt. much like the Suzuki Hayabusa speed hack that involved the ECU thinking the bike was only doing 299km/h but was clearly doing more. (clearly... i dont know, 299km/h V's 325km/h, you would notice yeah ??) 2: depends on how the hack was applied. I doubt they could tell, unless it was something really overt. say, a big black box hanging off the side of the engine that isnt normally there, or the ECU no longer works with the tester because is an aftermarket ECU 3: Rev Limiter: simple form, yes. an engine is only designed to run at a set maximum speed. If you are talking about removing the rev limiter, i dont even know why you would bother for every day driving. these engines for the size of them produce a lot of power and rev fairly smartly. why you would want to get more out of it is intriguing to say the least. If you over rev the engine, you leave yourself over to spinning bearings and cramming pistons into valves. never pretty and fairly conclusive when you take it back in for warranty... why are the valve heads hanging out of the piston crowns ? once you get above certain rev ranges, it starts to affect other things, such as crank shaft balance, torque converter balance, gearbox input speeds, fuel injection keeping up, oil cooling/pressures. The Aurion engine is designed with an ECU that knows these limits. a short burst above the redline wont hurt it in the short time, but repeated trips into red and beyond at standard engine config will only result in tears after long term exposure. 3: Speed Limiter: Harm the engine ? Not really. a car has an actual top speed, and a theoretical top speed. one involved wind resistance and rolling resistance, one is Max RPM inserted into an equation that works out gear ratios and wheel diameter to give you that number. Dont worry, your car will never get to that speed unless its on an unladen dyno... and even still then... it will stop short. On the open road, you would need a huge run up to get anywhere near the top speed. are you planning on racing this car ? because you have other issues to worry about if its top speed you are looking at doing, such as wind drag and handling, transmission cooling, drive line cooling, brakes for stopping, tyres that can go that fast. Just because a car can do 300km/h or has 300km/h on the speedo, does not mean it is capable of being there. As for experienced opinion, i was an automotive mechanic for 15 years. i have raced anything that had wheels and an engine. My brother graduated as the top engine reconditioner the year he finished his trade and now spends his time building race engines. I have rebuilt engines with him from as small as model aeroplanes to 16V 149 Detroit earthmoving engines. 2 strokes and 4 strokes. from lawnmowers to speedway sprint car engines. Together with my family who own an engineering company, we have built race cars from as small as formula 500 (TQ midgets) to V8 open class track cars. Hope that helps :) Just on a side note because i was bored, i went searching, and it seems the Aurion has a 228km/h speed limiter ? dont know... can a Toyota tech confirm or deny this ? i have made up a excel template to show what your car is capable of in theory.. lets say at max rpm where horse power is calculated, 200kw @ 6200 rpm, in 6th gear the wheels would be doing 347km/h providing you have the standard wheels on it :)

The reason it does this amazing feat is because its digital. almost all modern cars have digital temperature gauges. The way they work is the ECU gets a signal from the sensor, works out how to use it, and relays that information to the dash display. you will find the gauge has a tolerance of about 20 degrees where it will not move, say from 90C to 110C. It is more of a step gauge. if you went out and bought an old type temp gauge and put it in the car along side the original one, the analogue one would move up and down as you drove. Thats why everyones gauge sits in exactly the same place on the aurion. If your car over heats, you usually get no real advance warning.. all that happens is the gauge goes from the horizontal to the red section of the gauge and a light comes on and a buzzer goes off. gone are the days of looking and sseing it inch up higher and higher and pulling over to let it cool down. now its basically.. cold, warm, hot, overheating.

A ute with 4 doors.... interesting :) 2 for the cabin and 2 for the walk in tray... Either way, good work... interesting concept!

I just could not resist.... :)

You mean if i suddenly went out and bought a monaro bonet and got it beaten into a TRD Aurion shape ? Would it look something like this ??? Better still... making it a 2 door would make it a one off ;)I still like the 2 door photo i did earlier :)

Just thought i better chop up an Aurion TRD to make the car they should have made... Who cares about Monaro... I would have bought one of these over a Monaro CV6 anyday :)

Ok... lets say i want to do it cheaply on my SX6 Sportivo ? how would i go about doing that ?

After installing more of these things then you have had hot breakfasts... my suggestions are this... (assuming these are the stick on ones....) make sure the area you are attaching them to is clean... once you think it is clean... clean it again just to be sure... use a lint free cloth to do this. (NO tussie or kitchen paper...) In the pack should be some alcohol wipes. Dont suck on them... they taste like crap... not that i would know... a friend told me... yes, thats right.. a friend... Dont open these until you are ready to use them... Do you have a heat gun ? kinda like a hair dryer, but HOTTER!! it's not 100% needed, but at least a hot hair dryer is. A hair dryer will just require more time to heat the same surface area... DO NOT! heat the area you are sticking the shield to (ie: the car).. what you need to do is to heat the shied and the tape to a point where you can barely touch it. how hot?... about 4 degrees below melting point... ok, so not that much... but the shield should have a nice pliable feel to it. once its at that pliable point... clean the car with the alcohol wipes and peel up the ends of the paper off the tape and bend them at 90degrees to the tape. The shield should now be hot and pliable with about 1inch of tape showing at both ends... these are the mount points. Mount the shield to the car and make sure its stitting where you want it. it should be stuck down at both ends and have the two tabs showing. grab these tabs of backing paper you bent out before and slowly remove them all the time pressing down where the tape is being exposed... Once you have removed the tape, go over the shield again with the hair dryer/heat gun (dont over heat it with the heat gun... it may burn the paint... but if you know what a heat gun is, chances are you have used one, therefore know about them...) be sure to press down on the taped area... Leave to cool... Do the other side now... repeat from step one... When you are done... take your wifes hairdryer back inside and wait for her to abuse you for using it, and explaining to you how much it cost and how sensitive it is... chances are you know, because you paid for it in the first place! Not that that last part has ever happened to me... maybe it was a hair straightener i used on the sleeves of my fave business shirt... but thats a different story!

In answer to the question, yes, it will vary. It would depend on where you buy it, who you buy it from and how it is stored and for how long it is stored. E10 is usually higher in octane due to being blended with ethanol which has an octane rating of 116. The only problem with ethanol is that it takes a lot more energy to burn it. Hence the reason they say with older cars to not run it as they do not have the compression ratio required. As for engine damage.. its utter and pure baloney. If you run a 50cc whipper snipper or a 110cc lawn mower.. i probably would not consider running it. 2 strokes dont like it because they ping their heads off at the best of times and 4 stroke lawn mowers dont offer much in the way of knock sensors and retarded timing when they ping. As for it damaging a new engine in a new car, thats utter and pure garbage, especially if an engine and fuel system has been designed for it. The problem with ethanol is that is is a very effective cleaning agent. Even more so then petrol. It will pick up any piece of grime or sludge in your tank or fuel lines and run it down to the injectors. Another reason they say not to use it in old cars. The cleaning effect and the hoses being 15 years old are not that good and not built to withstand ethanol being pumped through them. As for engine damage, add that to the "garbage" file. What it can do in older cars is wash all the carbon built up over 15 years of running out of places like behind piston rings. This makes them loose. Basically the same effect as never changing your oil for 100,000km, and then going out and buying diesel engine oil to run through it... carbon... gone, rings loose... big smoke... The damage was done long before ethanol got there... ethanol just pulled the blanket off and exposed it. I kind of get sick of reading all these web sites that say "it damages your engine!" then dont back it up with any proof or examples. Yes it can, but then again, so can any fuel. More damage is done to an engine when it is cold and you turn the key to start it, back it out the drive way and tear down the street 30 seconds later... dont see any websites dedicated to that damage ? So far out of this tank doing the same drive to work every day i have averaged 8.8lt/100km on E10... compare this with standard unleaded where i averaged 10.9lt/100km over the same trip... this tank isnt finished yet, so only time will tell... last tank on standard doing this same drive every day was 500km from 56lt.

I dont want to be the antagonist here, but that is simply not true... unless you are going on holidays for like a year. Even then i doubt it would drop by enough to be noticeable by average driving. Fuel systems on modern cars are sealed. This is for a few reasons, namely one being pollution from escaping hydrocarbons (that cool mirage vapour look you get from the top of fresh poured fuel...) and the other is for water contamination. I would be willing to bet that the drop in octane rating over a 4 week christmas/new year break while you went on walk about or public transport would be so negligible that even putting the car on a dyno would have trouble picking up any discernible difference. Octane rating is used as a measure of fuels ability to resist "knock" Since nearly every modern car built with fuel injection (do they make cars still without fuel injection ?) will have knock sensors to combat this. Knock sensors are like microphones (for want of a better analogy) that listen to the cars engine for these "knocks". When they they pick up these knocks in the engine, they tell the ECU, which in turn retards ignition timing. Knock in engines is affected by a few different factors. The foremost is compression. The higher the compression of an engine, the higher the chances of engine knock. ?ie: TRD Aurion with supercharger would have a higher combustion compression ratio at full boost then your average Aurion. Other things that can affect knock is poor fuel and carbon on the pistons. On a side note, standard unleaded petrol has a RON of about 87/89, premium unleaded is around 92 to 98 (depends on what you buy and where.) Ethanol on its own is 116 (hence its use in octane boosta soopa race juice packets sold at your local auto shop.)

In my post, i wasnt asking what fuel is best to run, it was more of a curiosity on what people were running. Yes i looked at some of the other threads, but i didnt feel it necessary to revive a thread for what i wanted to talk about. I wasnt looking for any debate on different fuels. Some say its bad, some says its good. For every negative review, there is a positive review. Who do you believe ? Anyway... sorry for using up all this bandwidth with this "rehashed" thread... i will be sure to ask permission before i post anything again....