BenDavis

Hey guys, Just wanted to post a quick update for any of you following along at home. Took my car to my local Toyota dealership to have it diagnosed. Funnily enough, just from listening to the engine the guy from the service dept recommended that I save my money and not even get it diagnosed. I went ahead and they came back saying I would need to have the 2 VVTi controllers replaced, 2 camshaft gear assemblies and the water pump assembly. All together parts came to $2,085 and with about 15 hours of labour grand total is $4150. Also managed to have my dash replaced for free thanks to @mg85 for the advice on that one. I took the car into a couple of used car dealerships on the rare days that the car was behaving itself and running silently and they both offered $6000, taking into consideration there's a few scratches on the rear bumper and dings around it as well as no service history. So yeah, not sure what I'm going to do next as I'm planning on studying overseas in a year which would mean any car I had at the time would go unused for a year while I was out of Australia. Regardless, thanks for all the help from you guys

Wow, thanks very much mg85. I remember looking through the forum about this problem a long time ago, I think that might have been before Toyota started to cave for cars out of warranty because I only remember seeing people with warranties having any success. Realistically due to my lack of mechanical know-how I think I might try and trade it in, hopefully for a 2010 Presara (because I regret not getting a facelifted Aurion in the first place) so hopefully if I can get the dash replaced first that might up the trade-in value. By any chance does anyone here have any knowledge of trade-in price of these?

Thanks very much for all the advice guys, it's nice to see even though these cars are aging a bit there's still plenty of life in this community! mg85, What do you mean saying Toyota came to the party? My dash is buggered from this problem so would Toyota maybe replace it? Or was that an in-warranty thing?

Hey guys, long time lurker here, hoping that one of you could shed some light on my disaster of a car. I privately bought a used 07 Presara in March of 2016. Seller wanted $11,000 for it, it had a few noticeable issues, primarily the front left wheel hub was making a sound and the windscreen was barely transparent (my guess is from never changing the wiper blades, ever.) so after having it inspected by the NRMA and talking to my mechanic, I got him down to $9,500. Keep in mind, I'm 19 and this is the first time I've ever bought a car and had little help from others. Turned out to fix the wheel hub, an engine mount and the new windscreen was $2,500, but I was just happy to have a gorgeous car and be rid of the issues. Enough backstory, now to the real problem. Since buying the car in March 16, the total I've spent on it (including cost) is $25,600. The car has maybe spent 2 months in the last year with no (noticeable) problems. First I had the notorious U660E cold-changing from 3-4 badly. Then had to replace the brakes (friend at a Lexus dealership got them at cost and friend installed them). Then blew a headlight. Then the alternator went (in the last 30 mins of a 30 hour drive from Syd-NT). Then needed a new ignition coil (installed myself). Now I'm faced with a yet undiagnosed problem with the engine. Basically what it's doing is when it idles in neutral, the revs will slowly drop until about 800rpm, then the engine revs itself back up to about 1500rpm and the revs slowly drop, and repeat. When the car is in drive and stopped (with the brakes obviously), the revs will stay down at 800rpm, and the aircon will start blowing warm air, as if I've pressed the A/C button off. The car also creeps in drive very quickly, and often will change how fast it wants to creep (e.g. every time I'm parking, as I get halfway into the spot and I'm letting the car move itself forward, it will lurch forward quite quickly.) The car also currently sounds like a diesel. I literally had a mechanic ask me if I had a diesel camry (hah). I had that mechanic do two really good oil flushes and then top it up with new oil with an additive to break down the oil sludge that was in the engine. This fixed the noise for 1-2 months but now it's back to being louder than a truck. The check engine light also periodically comes on and off at random. It's mainly reporting error code P0019 (Crankshaft position sensor(bank 2, sensor B)) and P0025 (Camshaft "B" timing (bank 2)) I'm honestly at the end of my rope with this car. I recently went to Toyota Alice Springs, they seemed convinced it would be a clean or replace of the throttle body, but after inspecting it they now think the whole cause of this idling/noise problem is a build-up of oil sludge and they want to completely take the engine apart, clean it and rebuild it, which will be about 30 hours of labour ($4200!!!!) plus parts. I know I should never have bought the thing and probably should have gotten rid of it months ago but I'm a dumbass who every time hoped that would be the last wad of cash I'd need to throw at it. Does anyone have any experience with their car doing the same or similar things? Anyone have any help they could give me? I've uploaded a video to YouTube of the revving issue. No, I wasn't parked next to a truck, that's the sound of my engine you can hear. In this video, I never touch the accelerator at all. https://youtu.be/CimK5XZl01k