Badman

Re the dust: Just use a narrow throat nozzle to the end of your normal household vaccum cleaner and move it across the face of the slot. You DON'T want to have a nozzle that's so small that it fits into the slot (otherwisde other damage to the CD drive might occur.). Just putting it at the opening should present sufficient pressure to suck out dust affecting the CD drive read heads. Prados usually have an excellent seal on the doors and windows so unless you had the windows open or the vents open while driving through dust (and lots of it) I'd recommend you might wish to check the operation of the vents inside the dash. Cheers. Badman. All else failing, I'd recommend a professional service the denso unit.

My 2009 Prado 3.0 litre turbo deisel pulls a 1575 kg boat with ordinary inertia brakes (i.e. not electric brakes) and the Prado doesn't even feel it's there. I suggest that an 800kg campervan would not present a problem. Also remeber that anything being towed that's over 750kg should have its own brakes, even if only inertia activcated ones. Please check RTA regs on this for your own piece of mind. I think most pop top campervans have inertia brakes as minimum. Cheers. Badman.

:D I bought a new Prado deisel in Feb 2009 and since new it had the following problem. After coming to a complete stop (normally,...like at traffic lights or similar) and then letting the brakes go in order to move off, the car gave an audible thump from under the car and a substantial "shove" in the back of your seat. It was very noticable on down hill lines. it was as if the car was not initially engaging 1st gear but then did just prior to moving off. After being told by the dealer that it was just "excess spacing in the spline between the tailshaft and the gearbox", and that their solution was to fill the space with grease, I continued to raise the problem when within a few kilometres of having the space greased, the thump returned. Again after some persistence with the dealer, they admitted it was a known problem with the tailshaft and booked it in for a tailshaft replacement. Last week the new tailshaft was installed and all seems to be working perfectly now. Cheers. Badman.

;) In Feb 09 I bought a brand new Prado deisel. Part of the new vehicle purchase was a standard, heavy duty, Heyman Reece towbar, installed by the dealer (or their contractor). From delivery time, the 4 head reversing sensors detected the towbar. This meant that as soon as you engaged reverse gear, the "close proximity" warning would sound a constant tone. Enough to drive you absolutely mad and especially annoying if you're reversing a long distance up a private driveway. After several attempts and months trying to adjust the sensors, the dealer said it wasn't their problem as I had ordered a non-standard towbar (i.e not the Toyota approved one). I had an opposing view. Through persistence, I discovered that Toyota knew thius was a problem with other Prado's and that they had recently released a revised (maybe new) reverse sensor computer that overcame the problem. The new (revised) reverse computer was installed last month under warranty and appears to have fixed the problem - works perfectly and very accurate. In fact it's so accurate that one has only 50mm between the towbar and the object when it gives a constant tone....so be careful to approach the object slowly and stop at the first constant beep. Good outcome after all but did take a fair bit of persuasion. What would be even better is if the system was designed to disengage the beeper when towing a trailer and needing to reverse it. Maybe next years version??? Cheers. Badman.