Sebastian Woodhouse

What a week in the land of Toyota Ownership. I freely admit I’ve not done much with cars for a few months. Life has a way of working itself in ebbs and flows of good and bad. Sadly in our household we’re in the bad swing with no one’s friend Cancer turning up for a visit, a need to find another place to live in a torrid rental market etc. Anyhow, important Toyota business. You all know I’ve been sceptical of the “diagnosis” Toyota made during the scheduled service. I mean a blind Freddy knows trying to claim the rear wiper blades need replacement shoes a complete disregard for the customers intelligence. So I finally sent Sebastian for a visit with a local workshop, one linked with a large motoring body, and coincidently where a mate works as a Service Adviser. The brief was simple. Check the stuff Toyota claimed, and if there was any merit in it, do the work. While you’re there do the full transmission service anyway. Within 2 hours of drop-off I had the call “mate there’s nothing wrong with it, can’t fault it”. So with a bit of self satisfaction I gave the nod for the gearbox service and picked him up the next day (my choice). In full disclosure, something wasn’t quite right, so I popped back in today just before closing to make arrangements to have him checked next week. Nope, straight into the workshop, checked, my “not quite right” confirmed as being a legitimate feeling. 40 minutes after they were supposed to close I was driving away and it was right. The problem? Maybe 250ml of transmission fluid short of the “correct” level as determined with all the Toyota warm it, poke it til it goes sploosh method. How this happened? Maybe some trapped air, maybe someone just misjudged the sploosh. Whatever. Fixed now and smooth quiet shifting once more.

It’s Australia, if there’s nothing trying to kill you are really alive 🙂 It’s a fair point though and all the cars do get an annual treatment of the residual/surface treatment on the underbody and engine bay. Except Sebastian turned up a month or two after I did it…. I’m not far enough over my last Century battery experience to go back yet 🙂

Shock! Horror! Disaster! The Camry broke down. Is that enough click bait? Good because like most things a Camry does it did it in a leisurely manner to cause the least inconvenience. See the weather down here in Canberra has been sub-par with a howling wind for the past few days and a “feels like” temperature of single digit. Last night was probably the coldest it's been in 2022. So naturally this morning we get into Sebastian, tap the start button and dutifully the motor spins slightly. And stops. Starter solenoid clicks a few times, then (Push button start systems generally restart/retry a few times) after a couple of goes kicks over and away we go. At this point I though maybe the local criminals had left an interior light on or something whilst rifling the 80's/90's mix-tape CDs in the centre console, but no. Drive to our destination and park. Need to head off 5 minutes later and same again. It's either a starter problem or a battery problem. Go home, swap cars and do the rest of our errand running in the luxury of the XR4. Get home and decide to troubleshoot, in the rain… Step one, deactivate the RedBack security system. For some reason both cars have colonies of them living under, and around them. I'm almost tempted to put on in the gloveboxes for the next time my taste in music gets critiqued by 12 year old career criminals. Step Two: Look at the battery I kept from my Megane, whilst dirty it was 2 months old when the car got written off and is a pretty decent Stop-Start one. Shove it in the hole. Press Start button. The 2GRFE quietly comes to life with more enthusiasm than ever. So, definitely the battery. Unfortunately while it fits in the hole the clamp doesn't fit on it, and the terminals are too small for the Toyota leads, neither problem is in surmountable, but I also don't want to be chasing my tail in 6 months time when my “make it fit” leads to “it won't go”. Now I've lived in Canberra for 29 years, and in that time I have pretty much always gone to “The Battery Factory” and bought whatever the guys there have advised. I've never gone back for a warranty replacement (and the eldest battery I bought from them was 10 years old when I got rid of it in the Megane) and while I may have paid a little more it's just one of those things, they have the right battery, it works, and my problems are resolved. But they close at 3pm on a Saturday and I figured it was time to do a quick Google and check on the Supercharge website for the “make my Camry work” part number. The premium capacity option being this: Google also revealed Autobarn are doing 25% off batteries. Jump on their website and yep, in stock at my local (3km away) and a mere $168. It's at this point I should point out that the last commodity battery size I had was in my BA XR8, with both the Megane and XR4 batteries being “no stock” from any of the SuperAutoRep stores (thus reinforcing my continued use of The Battery Factory). Anyway went and picked up the battery, stuck it in the Camry and it starts with great fervour and it only took 15 minutes to vaguely get the stereo setup again. I look forward to needing to do this again in 41 months because it's a 40 month warranty.

[QUOTE=Aaron;n7341686] The list: - Front and Rear wiper blades (car doesn't have a rear wiper) - Radiator Cap failed pressure test (First time in my life I've ever had someone say they tested the cap when there's no cooling system fault being chased) - Both front ARB link rods - Both Driveshafts “have play” - Sump leak [/QUOTE] So the sun is shining and I crawled under the Camry for a looksie. Let's ignore the Rad Cap and Wiper blades for now. ARB link rods. They are smooth in their movement, I can grab and shake the entire car to the point it rocks on the stands and not feel any play. The boots are tired and I think the lower end on the drivers side has cracked the boot. Maybe. It was just greasier. Sump Leak. Yeah Nah. The lower tin pan was dry and clean all the way around except where some stuff has run down from higher. The upper cast alloy portion of the sump which is more like a block Girdle (but doesn't retain the crank) also is dry around the seam, except where some stuff has run down. The spill overs from filling the motor would run (as one path) down that side of the block and that's the kind of dirty muck that I degreased off mostly months ago. The back side of the block was still clean so I just degreased (and did a bit more of a scrub so as far as I'm concerned No sump leak, maybe some seam weep as per a 200,000km engine if I'm being generous. Drive Shafts: This has some merit. The left definitely has a bit more play and when the wheel is jiggled in that play It does rattle a bit. It's also the short shaft so would cop a flogging moreso than the right side. No grease fling from damaged boots, no weep from the axle seal in the trans. Right (drivers) side. Less play. But there is grease sling from the inner joint. It looks like at some point someone's been there before as the inner boot appears to have a zip-tie holding it on the big end. The grease sling also goes up the same dirty area of the sump and back of block. I have cleaned it all up, and basically will continue to do so until I can be bothered feeling up the boot better and determining if it's ****** or just slinging grease out the end because zip-tie. Either way, very likely I won't go back to that dealership for the next book service, as there's probably $500-700 of work that is completely unnecessary at this point in time.

At the end of February.. Sebastian went to the local dealership for his 195000km schedule service (to continue the service history). Somehow Toyota mechanics found some $2000 worth of repairs that would need to be done. I'm not calling BS on that, but I am quite amused that two roadworthy inspections, a check by a local suspension shop and also the local tyre guy doing the alignment in the past 3000km all failed to find $2000 of things to do. The list: - Front and Rear wiper blades (car doesn't have a rear wiper) - Radiator Cap failed pressure test (First time in my life I've ever had someone say they tested the cap when there's no cooling system fault being chased) - Both front ARB link rods - Both Driveshafts “have play” - Sump leak Impressive. Now I haven't jiggled stuff in the front end hard, and yes the entire back half of the engine is coated in oil spilled over the years from filling at each service. But it doesn't leave drops on the ground either. I'll have to make some time to actually check things myself and clean down the engine properly to be sure there's a real leak and not just mess. I think it's a combination of maybe someone being extra proactive looking for wear and also “while we are fixing one side we will change the other because that's not dumb”. Pricing to fix seems pretty sharp given the parts cost (I put the quoted part numbers in Amayama to check) so I can’t even call it out as a rip off.

Wow it’s been a while hasn’t it? For a start I can say I’m incredibly happy with the window tint. In the closing months of summer it made a massive difference. However let’s roll back over some of the little things that have been afoot. When we did the ACT rego stuff back in August (literally days before the last ACT lockdown) we popped the extra dollarydoos to have the number plates done in plastic so my OCD wouldn't have to deal with the White/Blue combo on a black car. As much as I wanted YUB33R that was going to cost about 10% of the purchase price so nope. Regular sequence plates for us. Anyway over 4 months of waiting later instead of the usual couple of weeks I got the letter saying come to Collect them. Except I had to get them from here. Which sounds easy but since Omicron, nope. Each day the ACT Gov decides which Access Canberra is going to open based on available staff. This one is where my number plates were physically so it had to actually be open. Then you need to front up and join the queue electronically, during normal business hours, so if you have a job you're ******. It's been up to 5 hours for that first queue. I waited 90 minutes thankfully. Then, that queue lets you queue inside the office where a bunch of staff from all the offices are trying to do their best. I got the one who didn't know where number plates were kept. Or the number plate filing system. I got there before 2pm. I was home plates in hand and eyeing off a celebratory beer a hair after 5pm. I no longer twitch when looking at it.

With a quick wash to get the residue from the tint guy off the exterior Not bad for a hair under 195K and 7.5 years old.

Spot what’s changed? yep… nice black window tint.

Yep. At a guess it’s been quite hot and humid weather as well? Pop out the cabin filter, turn on the A/C and run the FAN at full speed, and also put the heater on maximum. Then spray a can of Glen20 into the slot the cabin filter would be in. What this does is distribute the Glen20 through the vent system, in particular on the heater and AC coils which is where the majority dank was comes from.

Change the Dashcam to be powered r the ON position.

I bought the Continental EC6 (or CC6? Would have to check) when we got Sebastian, for the price they are a pretty good option. Amazing how a matched set of decent tyres and a competent alignment transform the car.

I’m faced with a similar issue in my other car. It’s likely to need a dryer, and the vacuum is done as part of the regas (well de-gas then replace part, then vacuum, then gas) process. I would avoid compressor or condenser changed unless there is physical damage to them. The Dryers are a finite life item (long life admittedly).

Operation Plug-n-Play. I'd had a extra beer after getting home from a NYE lunch with friends and decided that installing the sweet new tunes was a good idea. I mean it's all plug and play right? Step One, remove a bunch of stuff. The cover from the clock and seatbelt reminder gets unclipped (it slides towards the rear of the car to disengage with a bit of an upward angle. Then the Center vents and clock unit get removed - again they're just clipped in and a firm tug pops them out. On the lower corners two little cover pieces get in clipped. Now the 4 X 10mm bolts that hold the centre stack in place are exposed. They get removed and the assembly can be unclipped and unplugged. So. Many. Plugs. Stock unit is held in place with 3 bolts per side. The metal frame is actually attached to the climate unit and the climate unit is clipped onto the fascia. The yellow clips get transferred to the Aerpro Fascia tabs. There's two types and they are specifically oriented. Test fit of the climate unit and fascia. Looks OK. Back view. The “trick” is the stereo needs to be screwed into the frame then the frame, stereo and climate unit installed into the fascia. In the bench the fit looks appalling, this had me stumped but clipping the fascia into the dash resolves that. Lots of plugging. There were a couple of WTF moments. I had to swap a (supplied) wire into the adapter loom to replace a male bullet terminal with a female one so it could plug into the adapter loom for the headunit. This explained (not documented) why there was a random terminated wire tagged “reverse”. The little magic box that converts steering wheel buttons was a pain in the —-, but once I reset the headunit with the handbrake connected I was able to configure it. Or rather activate it. In place. It's not quite an slick as you'd hope, but the entire front panel is motorised and tilts for access to the DVD/CD slot. Sound quality is way better than the factory unit and overall it's got good features but some of the execution isn't great. I have some configuration fine tuning to do and I will pull the unit again to wrap some insulation around all the connector bundles in a day or two after a good test. What I'm most pleased about is the factory USB and AUX ports are used, the factory (6v) reverse camera works and genuinely everything plugged in and just worked. No splice and extra wire etc. I don’t like having to use the Pioneer microphone, apparently it’s possible to power and adapt the factory microphone so that may be a task for future me. My Bill of materials: Pioneer AVH-ZL5150BT Aerpro Toyota Aurion GSV50 Fascia FP8052 Aerpro CHT015C Control Harness Kit (this is the one with every adapter for the car) Aerpro APP9PIO8 Stereo Adapter (This hooks the pioneer to the CHT015C kit) I’m still stunned that it was 90 minutes of relaxed pace work and the job is done. It would take probably 30 minutes to pop out to do my insulation.

We have Carplay in our other two cars, and Sebastian’s predecessor had a super useable Satnav setup that despite lacking Carplay worked flawlessly with the phones via USB or Bluetooth. The Toyota system is just clunky and more than a bit finicky.

I figure the fan is was at 7 years old, and the car has averaged 500km/week for its whole life (before I got it in July) so a fan just plain wearing out isn’t unsurprising either. in other news. I’ve decided to finally bin the factory stereo and replace it with a modern (CarPlay being the specific objective) aftermarket unit. While I would have preferred to have either an Alpine (like out other two cars) I also wanted to have the headunit sit in the Aerpro Fascia kit without an adapter ring. That meant shopping for a 200mm unit as opposed to DoubleDin. Options were Kenwood DDX-920WDABS, Kenwood DMX-820WS and a couple of lower spec Clarion options. What I settled on was the Pioneer AVH-ZL5150BT. On paper the spec is great and there’s a lot of generally positive commentary about the units online. The real win was stock availability, both Kenwood are on restricted supply - so installers can get them on demand, but DIY and online only retailers struggle to get stock. The other win is price. I paid a hair under $650 for a unit that has a RRP closer to $1k. In the current market I’ll call that a good deal. Obviously it’s yet to arrive, but I have the Install facia and loom kit here already (bought for sub $100 earlier this year). Detailed Install pics etc will come once it arrives.

The cabin filter when we got Sebastian was definitely well past it’s prime. Obviously skipped at least one interval, possibly two. Where the clogged filter theory falls down a bit is that when the system is in Recirc mode (either full defrost, or in hot weather full AC) the filter is bypassed and air is draw. Directly from behind the glovebox. It’s an odd fault, most googling points at the weird fuse in the engine bay or the fan motor itself being “burnt out”. Either way, fixed is fixed 🙂

I mentioned earlier a “Climate Control Glitch”. Well the glitch ended up turning into a fault and as such it had to be resolved. So what was going on? In short, intermittent cabin fan function. Initially I’d thought it was just a delay in starting the fan after PowerOn, but it became random, and would pulse the fan full on, then off, then full on for a few minutes on warm days before working fine. Then a few days before Christmas, just as the “cold” weather broke and we were in the 30’s. yeah not happy. Luckily I’d seen a cheap (used) blower fan and so I had that awkward “what’s this delivery from OnlyFans?” discussion with my wife on Christmas Eve. New fan wasn’t the cleanest. I sprayed it liberally with cleaning agent, and proceeded to pull Sebastian apart. It takes a lot more tools and screws to get to the fan than actually removing the fan. On my old fan jigging the connector could reproduce the fault. But also with the fan out of the housing it was obviously making a bit more noise than the replacement unit indicating that it’s bushings also aren’t that great. So why the pulsing? well the fans seem to have a PWM controlled built in, it drives the fan motor at the chosen speed and also incorporates a safeguard against overloading/over current. My theory is that the controller itself has cooked a bit, and as the fan has aged and the cabin filter been left clogged (and the bushings start wearing) the controller starts cutting power because the load is excessive. Once the fan pulses enough times the inertia and heat in the bushings overcomes the resistance and it can settle down and keep running. Anyway my $72 delivered used fan works perfectly and is a bit quieter in the lower speeds. If/When it fails I’ll just replace it with a new one from RockAuto.com. Shouldnt be more than about $250 for a brand new one delivered (I did check new pricing and there are some very cheap options, but $72 and a localish return policy was a good middle step to see if that’s my problem). — Checked the oil and it’s good and clear too, next scheduled service is February and I’ve got a couple more distance runs to do before then.

https://www.hardracesuspension.com.au/rear-sway-bar~1308 Hardrace. Fitted up and made a big difference in the feel/confidence in cornerss

@Tony Prodigy I probably should have been clearer, temporary no worries, but so many people leave this kind of “fix” in place forever so subsequent owners end up with both the initial problem and the “fix”. Things like siliconed up sunroofs or drilling holes in taillights instead of making new seal-gaskets etc etc..

Message some of the eBay sellers with used parts. Sure they’ll probably sting you $20 for a piece of plastic they would normally throw away but better than duct taping up a service item.

Finally clocked up so actual driving in Sebastian. Nothing remarkable but more importantly nothing went wrong or weird which bodes well for longterm use. We are very happy with our measured fuel consumption. A couple of 7.61/100km fills and then a 6.85L/100km stint over 400km that included West to Easy Sydney. We’d bought an Aurion with the intent to do long-distance and day trips (like the ~750km I did yesterday) so fuel consumption was a factor. Recent rental small/medium SUVs typically getting sub-8L on the highway, but lacking the torque for punchy overtaking on “B” roads and various single lane rural and remote region roads. To return 7.X and have the torque/power on tap is a good result. He’s not the most powerful car we’ve owned, nor as sure footed as those that came before him but he’s definitely still a worth successor. Will have to check the oil colour (about 2000km since the flush and change) and get on with booking the trans service.

From memory the Toyota warranty is on the repair and will be honoured by any dealership. Usually a workshop will take all day doing a job like a water pump just purely in a comfort and safety basis, let the engine bay cool off a bit, drop the water, let stuff dry and cool some more (usually while working some more accessible tasks) then finally when things are “warm” or even cold get into the tight spaces and do the work. Then fill it up, let it sit, check for leaks, warm it up following any bleed process, check for leaks, road test, check for leaks, adjust levels and push out the door. Quite often they’ll slip another basic service or two between tasks, or if the customer need to sign off in an extra part or two.

Manuals for things like Navigation etc are available from www.toyotamanuals.com.au Its not the most intuitive site but has a lot of freely accessible ownership doco

Not a 2GRFE, but I recently spent 4 hours beating a waterpump out of the block of my other car. It was held on with 3 bolts and 14 years of previous owners sins with cooling system maintenance. It is barely a 2 hour job otherwise - and that includes removing a headlight to get access to the pump. So yeah, just maybe it was a job going pear shaped because of circumstances that normally would be predicted. Access isn’t that bad, but if the pump is corroded in place then the game changes a lot.

Yep - there’s not much point in pushing harder on Sebastian’s paint. I’ve left a decent amount of deeper swirls and marring as well as the scratches. He’s now probably typical in terms of paint damage for his age, but with a really good clarity so the various metallic flakes sparkle in the light. It’s got two heavy coats of CQuartz over it now. There’s not much else to be done except be on top of the coating maintenance. But enough on the body. I’m currently getting my head around a glitch in the climate control system, but I would say I’ll just fire the parts canon at that - it’s either the Fan, or the controller. I wouldn’t mind a a control panel with less wear on some of the buttons and it does have to be stripped for the LED conversion. The other to and fro is the headunit. On one hand there’s a couple of Joying units that could be fitted and work. Joying are one of the better aftermarket integrated units if only because their base specs are generally higher. The other hand is waiting for some normalcy in aftermarket units to return. I’d been looking at the Kenwood DMX820WS specifically, but I’m also wonder that maybe giving up on the 200mm fitment and going for an Alpine ILX407A and pairing it with the (US sourced) CANBUS interface to do the one screen vehicle configurations that the factory unit does would be cool. That said I can always use Techstream for config and do I really need the A/C settings appearing on a screen directly above the AC controls?