riftime

A few months back I had my dash removed and reinstalled to fix some dash rattles. They didn't put the car back together right and either damaged something or did not align/install it back right because as soon as I drove out that Check VSC light and bell came on. They had to order some cable or part and once changed the issue was fixed. All at their expense as the car is under warranty. From the very vague description I was able to obtain, it had to do with the way the steering wheel was aligned with respect to some sensor used by VSC. Not sure if that's just made up stuff, but the steering wheel was offset after their initial dash efforts and the VSC problem wasn't there. When they straightened the steering wheel the VSC problem came up. After that part was changed, the VSC problem went away and the steering wheel was straight again.

How often do you do that? i.e.: Does that fix the problem for days, weeks or months ?

My Presara's developed this smell of late. It coincided with me adding one of those hanging air fresheners in the car. I've gotten rid of the air freshener after a couple of days (too strong), but now for the first minute or so when I start the car, a sweaty, kind of sweet smell is emitted which is quite far from being pleasant. I'll try the Glen 20 trick on the passenger foot well, but I think I usually have my climate control set to fresh air (rather than recycle). Does anyone know where the fresh air inlet is located so I can Glen 20 that as well? From a different perspective, no other car I've owned ever experienced this issue. Why is the Aurion different in this regard? Also, since it's a common problem, you'd think Toyota would do something about it? If it's moisture trapped in the air con ducts, doesn't that pose a health risk, i.e.: legionella ? Sounds to me like a design flaw, and all the treatments until a permanent fix is introduced should be performed free of charge at each service... Like I said, first car that's done this to me, in the same climate, same driving patterns, etc. In 20 years that I've been driving with A/C! Holden, Ford, Volvo, and an older Toyota were all free of this nuisance.

Actually you make a good point. The manuals are for the US version of the car and they don't have Toyota Link there. They do instead have learning remote control buttons for your gates & garage doors. So if the US car doesn't have Toyota Link and doesn't have the box in the boot, they're most likely related.

I haven't had time myself to do this, has anyone checked the very detailed service manuals available in this forum for information on what that mystery box is?

Regarding the dash rattles, I can "force" the noise by grabbing the dash just above the steering wheel and pulling/pushing it. The sound is almost like it's touching the windscreen? For those rattles that appear to come and go, I've noticed that in summer the rattles are much less obvious than in winter. Probably due to the plastic/rubber parts being softer and more forgiving than in winter when they're stiffer. I now have a rattle somewhere on my right. It could be either the drivers door, the center pillar, or something like that? Comes and goes, still trying to push here and there to isolate it. Has anyone else experienced rattles in the door or pillars ?

My Presara's quiet on startup, just the way I like it. Louder than the parking assist beeps? That must be annoying! I don't think I've EVER heard the beep you mention! The only audible alarms I get in my car are: - Pparking assist - Seatbelt notifications (are you by chance fastening the seatbelt just after starting your car, maybe it's the seatbelt alarm!) - Door ajar notification - and of course the all time great "you just drove off with the hand/foot brake applied you idiot" notification. This got me a few times when the car was new and took me some time to get accustomed to the foot brake. Now I love it, and usually end up doing the now instinctive (yet pointless) tap dance in my wife's car looking for it... She's got a ford, so naturally it's a lever half the size of a baseball bat in between the seats...

Definitely a quiet start on my Presara, no beeps whatsoever. Also noticed that the ToyotaLink light indicator (on roof, near moonroof controls) may go from red to green (no signal to signal) without any kind of audible notifiers. By the way, does anyone know what communication Toyota Link uses? Is it GSM based, or something else?

Interesting. Is it possible to tint the center brake light on the Aurions? I thought the parcel shelf is moulded around the centre brake light and inaccessible from the inside of the car (where the tinting is performed). I'll need to check my rear light now, hoping that it's not tinted and therefore potentially rendered my car unroadworthy. Regarding the % tinting, I could have sworn that when I was sitting in Tint Professor's waiting room and glancing at the wall that had samples of the various tints displayed next to each other, the lesser % appeared lighter rater than darker. However, since I'm the only one who is confused about it, I'll accept the more common description as correct... :) Come to think of it, a tint that reduces light by 10% would be pretty pointless. It would be hard to notice the difference on a bright day. Also, nobody mentions much about tinting with a % greater than 35%. Given that there are darker tints out there, they must obviously be smaller % rather than larger %. LOGIC PREVAILS, the % tint must relate to the amount of light it allows through rather than the amount of tint applied to the window.

Let me clarify. I bought my car from Peter Davey in Werribee. My first 1,000kms inspection/check-up was with them, they fixed my A/C (under-bonnet) rattle successfully. Great service. Werribee is however very inconvenient for me, I only bought my car from there because they offered the best deal. The idea was I only go there to pick up my car (test-drove elsewhere), and that was to be the only trip to Werribee. The 15,000 service was done at another dealer. That's where I had to take my car back a few times for poorly completed dash re-assembly after they attempted to fix my dash rattle. It is this repairer that I was unhappy with. I'm reluctant to name them just yet in case it was just my car and I that was unfortunate... Let's just say that they're much closer to Melb CBD than Werribee is. To answer your question (what should you do), if Werribee is convenient for you, lucky you. Stick with it, I would.

Arghhh... Sorry... I never asked the service centre which pipe it was. I had it fixed at Peter Davey Toyota in Werribbee, VIC (Melb). If you're in Melb, you can try your luck and pay them a visit and get them to look at your car. Alternatively, give them a call and ask them to look up their records for my car (I can email you my rego if you want) to see what they did to fix my car. They did a good job, the sound never came back again. Have you tried to trace all the pipes around all the obstacles and check for clearances? Apparently this was very close and the vibrations caused it to touch, hence the rattle. Are you also sure that it's A/C related? i.e.: when on idle and the sound is present, if you turn the A/C off, does the rattle immediately stop?

Regarding Toyota Link, yeah it sounds like a neat service. Never used it in the 12 months I've had the car... I guess it's there just in case. I did once get a strange call coming via the toyota link, while I was on the phone (via car's bluetooth). It's like someone's call was accidentally routed to my car... It was hard to find out anything about it as I was talking on my telephone call and things were getting confusing with the mistaken toyota link call also asking stuff. The other mis-routed call was terminated before mine so I didn't get a chance to ask any questions... :( Could the box in the boot be related to the Presara SatNav GPS receiver ? Does the Grande have the same in-build SatNav as the Presara ? If yes, then I'd expect the same box in the boot of the Grande.

I too have a presara with that box. It could be related to the power window shade and/or toyota link. By the way, there's no loud beeps or ANY noises coming through the speakers when I turn the engine on. I wouldn't accept the service centre saying that's normal function.

Are you referring to an IPOD FM Modulator so that I can "tune" one of the FM radio channels into my IPOD? If yes, I already have 2 or 3. Work ok, a bit of static, but they do drain the batteries (IPOD or their own) and I'm not completely satisfied with the sound clarity. Also found that if I'm on a long drive, I have to change channels as I come across some interference due to overlap. In some relatively late model cars that I've rented over the past few years on holidays, I've had a simple audio input 3.5mm jack which was marvelous for audio quality. A proper IPOD interface would also charge the IPOD, allow you to navigate/control the IPOD via your car's audio controls (handy if you have steering wheel controls). Even better would be the ability to get all the IPOD data on your car's audio screen! Would make navigating so much easier...

I'm a little confused. I thought that the higher the %, the darker the tint? i.e.: a 35% tint will allow less light to enter the car than a 20% tint. So I'm not sure how a 20% tint would be of concern to an insurance company if 35% is not (hence, why would it get written up as 35% tint when it was 20%?). Last I looked at my insurance forms, under options/modification section, it was written as just "tinted windows", no mention of %. To go out on a limb, I would say that your question on whether you can legally tint your rear & rear-side windows even darker, I'm hoping that calling a dominant tint company in your state should clarify the legalities? I'm also hoping that if deemed legal, insurance shouldn't have a problem with it? Look at some utes, vans, etc... some have NO rear window. By that precedence, doesn't that mean that theoretically you can paint your rear window black, remove your rear view mirror and happily drive with just the side mirrors? A bit extreme, but that's what those van drivers do! I'm sure that VICRoads and the like in other states disagree with my thought process... :)

I too asked the same question a while back before tinting my windows (the window tinting thread). Never did get an answer. Now that I've tinted the windows (a few days back) I haven't had the change to drive at night AND notice the mirror automatically darkening yet. I'll look out for it now and post my findings. To be honest, I'm not too fussed as the tinting helps reduce the intensity of the lights, so it kind of achieves a similar outcome as the darkening mirror, albeit to a lesser extent. However, it would be nice for that function to still work as no doubt I paid good money to have that feature on the car... :)

Noted. Will keep this one in mind from now on. I should point out that I bought my car from Peter Davey in Werribee. They looked after me real well, as did their service department. They were quite good and persistent in isolating an on-and-off rattle under the bonnet somewhere (I couldn't demonstrate it when I took the car in). Turned out to be one of the Air Conditioning pipes being very close to the body and when working hard was vibrating sufficiently hard to touch the pane (and rattle). Impressive that they were able to find that, fixed of course free of charge. Probably only involved pushing/bending it slightly to increase the gap. That is NOT where I went to get my dash rattle fixed. I wish I did. It couldn't have been worse... :)

Age: 36 Sex: Male Status: Married Car: Presara (Black Exterior, Black Interior) Reason for buying: Initially I was set on buying a new Calais. However, I did the right thing and test drove the competition (Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota...). The Presara was best value for money and had the best options. After 10 years with Holden, I left them mostly on the basis of their new cars being built poorly. The interior quality of the new commodores is inferior to that in my previous VSII Calais. Never looked back, the Presara's a great car. Bought it for $46.5 drive away with fitted tow bar. Took a lot of negotiating at the time, the drive away price without discounts was about $53k. 18,000 kms on, still very happy with it (it's a keeper!). The only gripe I have with the Presara is... Would it have killed them to add an IPOD adapter (or at least an AUX input) for the Audio system? Grrr.....

All, I finally got the car windows tinted. Friend of mine did his car a couple of weeks back, it looked good and I opted for the same thing. Tint Professor (Melbourne) - INCOGNITO (carbon based film), $265 summer special. My car's black, it looks awesome with this tint. Happy Customer.

Mirror positions are memorized ok in my car, they and the seats return to the saved positions without problems.

Make sure you REALLY want the dash rattles fixed... I took my presara for a minor rattle fix, they ended up taking out the entire dash. They kept the car for a couple of days and returned it to me with more problems than when I took it in... Amongst them being: - Steering controls disabled - Climate Control / AC not working - Steering wheel not aligned properly (had it turned almost quarter to the left to go straight!!!) - Other various things not working (made a list, approx 12 items they stuffed up). - They also managed to add a few minor scratches to the passenger side dash and the speedometer unit plastic screen. So had to take it back again to fix all the things they didn't put back together properly. As soon as I drove out, the VSC (Vehicle Stability Control) light and bell came on. Another visit back again, then had to order some part which I had to wait 1 week for, and finally everything was put back together ok. The main rattle has gone, the dash scratch is still there, a new minor dash rattle has been added. Main thing to consider is that it's a big job to pull out the dash (I'd hate to see how many clips, screws and other spare parts get "left over" after completion), and with a new car, the handling of each item may introduce scratches/damage and/or other potential faults. I used to be of the opinion that a Toyota dealer will know how to fix it properly (the dealer is a prominent one in Melbourne), they will treat my immaculate Presara with care and return it to me in at least a good a state as I brought it in. Boy, was I confused !!! Their apologetic excuse was that their dash expert was away and someone else stood in and did my car. Would have been good to tell me that when I brought the car in, I would have happily waited for the "expert" to get back. Either way, the competency of their employees is not my problem, and such issues should be transparent to customers. Now I'm not sure if I dare take my car in for more dash repairs to eliminate the final rattle...

Likewise here... I was soooo disappointed with the SV6, a very rough and noisy ride. Not to mention the front end clunk when turning - car only had 75kms on dash. Berlina was a little quieter, and Calais was cool from outside but disappointing a ride and inside. Settled for the Presara, no regrets. I used to be a Holden fan, parted with my VSII Calais only a few months ago, I'd had it for 10 years. Someone mentioned the word "agricultural" in association with the new commodore, SPOT ON! Holden disappointed me and lost me as a fan. I had to look elsewhere. I'm a Toyota convert now.

Really? Cool!!! I was under the impression that you can navigate through playlists, but like a CD changer, you wouldn't get the song info on screen. I was misinformed, thanks for confirming, pleased to hear that. Would be nice for someone to get some video input working to use the sat nav screen for watching movies...

Does anyone know if the Toyota Navigation Map DVD can be copied? I have a Presara with v.13. Had a quick look and the DVD is just over 5Gig. That means a dual layer DVD will be required, has anyone tried a DVD+R or DVD-R dual layer to see if the system can read from the blue DVDs ? Thanks.

hmm... except a couple of months back when I refilled my wife's car (Fairmont) with 70L at the pump while the owner's manual states that it has a 67L tank, and the tank wasn't completely empty to begin with! It was a CALTEX on Mickleham Rd Airport West (Melbourne) who swore blue that their units are regularly calibrated. The question is... calibrated to WHAT ???