coladuna

From my experience, clutch adjustment did improve it little bit but it's still totally unacceptable. I don't know how much improvement there is if you change the clutch and what not, but you'll just have to live with the fact that the gearbox in Sportivo is utter rubbish.

When I had my Stivo, I took it to Southside (simply because I bought the car there). The head mechanic there is an absolute *****. They wouldn't accept the fault with the gearbox and stupid noise you get when the clutch is out. He suggested that if I'm not happy with the car, I should just sell it, which I did thank ***. What does that tell you about their attitude towards customer service? My car wasn't aligned properly when I first got it and I had to take it to them twice because they couldn't even do a frigging wheel alignment properly in one go. It sucks that they actually charge you for loan car as well. It's bad enough that their loan car is a crappy Camry which stinks like poo inside. My brother got his WRX serviced at City Subaru and they gave him a loan car free of charge and to my surprise it was a brand new Outback with only 3000km on the clock. All I can say is that I'll never buy a Toyota or even go near a Toyota dealership ever in my life. It's the worst experience I've ever had.

Had this problem with my car before, which Toyota refused to accept as a problem. It almost sounded like a diesel car with the clutch out and box in neutral at the lights.

I had a facelifted Sportivo, which I ended up selling after 6 months and I can confirm that it did have the same problems. I got so sick of crappy gearbox and dealing with Toyota about it. Ended up not really needing a car so sold it at a good price in two weeks.

I would take stock GTi over modified Sportivo anyday. I think that says it all. Who cares if it's a bit faster. GTi is superior in every aspects.

Hehe. I've just sold mine last friday. It's served me well but I really wasn't happy with the notchy gear shifts, unrefined drive train and other niggly problems.

Just to remind some of you that if the clutch adjustment is done properly, it should sit up much higher than normal. If that's not the case for you, it means they didn't do the adjustment according to the field fix. This is what I was told by the tech from Toyota HQ who took care of my concerns and enquiries.

I have a 05 facelift as well and I haven't had that problem. Maybe your headlights weren't adjusted to spec out of factory. Get your dealer to check and adjust for you.

how on earth did you narrow it down to the door sills? ?? What are you talking about? I haven't said anything about door sills.

It's a good thing that some dealers are refusing to sell the remaining Stivos for peanuts. It won't do any good for existing owners in terms of resale value.

I have the exact same problem as the OP. When I go to work in the morning, it makes whistling, squeaky, sort of noise for a very short time and it disappears probably by the time I drive for less than a minute. When I'm hearing this noise, it is not constant. It's more intermittent noise. Anyway, I haven't even mentioned it to the dealer as I know that they will refuse to even accept hearing the noise.

Well, 730km for 60L works out to be around 8.2L/100km so it's not the greatest fuel consumption figure I've seen on Sportivo. I usually refuel before the fuel light comes on at the latest, but the best figure I got was 7.8L/100km, which means I would have travelled 769km with 60L of fuel. BTW, it's not such a good idea to drive your car until your fuel tank is almost empty.

Geez. $200 for 10000k service???! You seriously got shafted. I rang a few dealers and the cheapest was $150 from Lexus, followed by $155 from Toyota near my place. Initially, I was booked in for a service with the dealer where I bought my car but I canceled the service after finding out $188 is way too much for 10000km service.

I'll probably get my car serviced on Tuesday. Already have Castrol Formula Synthetic oil (5W30) waiting in my garage. I'll see how it differs from Motul after I get the service done, althought I doubt I'll be able to notice any significant differences.

Most of my products are Poorboys. They are relatively cheap and works really well. Meguires is average at best compared to Poorboys products. Personally, I would never go back to polishing my car by hand, especially if you intend to remove swirl marks. Not only is it very time consuming, it's also not as effective in removing swirl marks and other fine scratches. I agree using rotaries is very dangerous for a beginner but if you have any common sense at all, using a random orbital polisher is very safe and effective.

Bah. Don't bother with this idiot. It's very obvious that he can't drive ****. Quite frankly, Sportivo is a car which loses a lot of speed if you stink at shifting. All I have to say to this troll is go and learn to drive before you blame the car. Better yet, it would be a better idea for you to buy yourself an automatic car, since you won't have to shift like a granny. LOL I don't really give a damn about your outdated, crap Commodore either, which is only good for guzzling down fuel.

$25k? Is that for a 'normal' purcahse? not salary sacrificing or novated leasing or anything like that?

Didn't do too bad for it's age compared to other newer cars. 2 for performance is ridiculous I reckon. Should have been 3.

Uh... is that anything to be excited about?

I use Motul 5W40 oil. I think it's semi-synthetic. It's the only oil I've used since the 1000km service so can't really comment on it yet.

A total waste of money. The only thing worth getting is the alarm and tint but you could get both of them for much lower price elsewhere. Why spend all that money when you could only spend a fraction on a set of high quality car care products to keep it looking like new? Newbies usually fall for these tricks lol As for the price of Sportivos, over $30k on-road. Geez. For that sort of price I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. I got mine for $27300 ON ROAD with floor mat. It cost me $230 or something to get it tinted elsewhere. I could have got slightly better deal I reckon but it was already a reasonable deal so I took it.

Just out of curiousity, is this a Sportivo? Everything suggests that it's a sportivo but there are no foggies?

Your old setting was not necessarily bad. The new one (long travel) would make much easier to slightly burn the clutch in routine maneuvers but obvioulsy is convenient for changing gears and starting smoothy the car. If you do not make many starts uphill will be OK. I guess the optimum trade-off is difficult to realize in this gearbox. My experience here is also that garages avoid work on fine adjustments by claiming that the clutch is self-adjustable. ← Previous setting was bad in every way. It always resulted in jerky shifts, unless I gave it some revs during shifts, which wears down the clutch. I don't see how it would make it easier to burn the clutch? After driving it for a couple of days, I'm now comletely used to it and there's absolutely no difference in terms of wearing out the clutch. The only difference is that it's like driving a completely different car now.

After lengthy period of complaining, I've had my clutch re-adjusted and gear selector cables completely replaced by Lexus in Indooroopilly and I must say I'm stoked with the outcome! :D I don't know which did the job, but the gearbox is completely different from before! The notchy shifts, especially from 1-2 and 2-3 is all but gone now and even at high revs, 1-2 shift goes in silky smooth! I tried hitting lift once and was absolutely shocked at how smooth it was. I thought the quality of my gear shifts before was normal but clearly it wasn't. Gear shifts are so seamless now that it almost feels like the car has become more powerful, which makes sense since I'm not losing as much momentum during gear shifts. All in all, I'm very happy with the job done by Lexus and I may even get my car serviced there from now on. Oh and I should add that Southside Toyota did perform clutch adjustment already before but according to Lexus, the clutch was completely out of spec. Clearly, Southside Toyota doesn't know jack**** as I suspected all along. However, the clutch pedal height has come up a bit compared to before and biting point is extremely high as well, which I'm still getting used to.

I have a black stivo and I've been a bit lazy with washing the car because it's been raining constantly. Last weekend I washed it and realised that I now have bloody water spots which won't go away with normal washing. I'll have to clay bar the car and go over it with random orbital buffer to try and get it out.