Toyota 86 and Rav 4 give some long-suffering owners a bad feeling

LAST weekend hundreds of Toyota 86 owners to look at each other’s cars, but not all are happy.

A report in the US said the Toyota 86 experienced “rough engine idle symptoms and occasional stalling”.

LAST week hundreds of Toyota 86 owners went to Sydney’s White Bay Cruise Terminal to look at each other’s cars, listen to The X Factor’s Samantha Jade, and get autographs from motor racers Neal Bates and Beau Yates, and Tetsuya Tada, the car’s developer.

The 86 is the MGB or MX5 of the noughties.

One former owner who won’t be feeling much joy is the young Adelaide woman who made the adventurous decision to buy a new 86. Across several months it was in and out of the dealer with its engine going into “limp home mode” to prevent stalling. Not a pretty picture in traffic.

Toyota PR boss Mike Breen says his company has no records of systemic issues on 86 model vehicles similar to this case. But two years ago Drive.com.au’s Matt Campbell wrote about a US report of “Toyota and Subaru two-doors — which were co-developed and are powered by the same 2.0-litre ‘boxer’ engine — experiencing rough engine idle symptoms and occasional stalling”.

Matt says “international enthusiast sites such as FT86club.com are openly discussing the problem”, with more than 100 registered complaints about rough idling. One forum member’s car has been in the workshop for weeks with parts including the oil-control valve and variable-valve-timing cam gear requiring replacement. “Australian owners have also taken to the internet to discuss the engine problem,” Matt says. At the time of writing he has had no response from Toyota or Subaru.

Moving — well, not really moving — right along, let’s hear from Rav 4 owner Chris Brown. You’ll remember our focus on Toyota came after my daughter-in-law’s 2013 Toyota Rav 4 stopped half way through a roundabout when the engine completely shut down and wouldn’t restart. Toyota’s response was, “We have referred this matter to our customer assistance department for further investigation. Toyota will respond as soon as possible.” So far, no response.

Chris bought a four-year-old Rav 4 SX6 with 43,800km on the clock from Peter Davey Toyota in Werribee in April last year. He says this model “is notorious for having a final-drive transmission whine which originates from faulty manufacturing ... and will end up costing many owners of this vehicle $4000 to $5000 in repairs”.

In 2010 Toyota issued a note to dealers detailing the problem. Davey sold and serviced the car from new and Chris says “they sold it to us knowing it was faulty. They then refused to fix it and when I approached Toyota about it, they told us to go away.” Chris went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and in May it ordered Davey Motor Company to fix the car and pay 75 per cent of the expert engineer’s fee.

Canberra’s Jim O’Brien has a 2013 diesel Rav 4 that is using lots of oil. Toyota has him in a monitoring program. As Jim says, “I do not have a lot of confidence in this program as after the last service I found the oil had been overfilled by at least a litre. If you Google Toyota owners club Australia and 2013 Rav 4 oil consumption you will find a lot of comment about the problem.”

There are eight million, well about 47, stories in motor city. These have been a few.

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