Digsy

You have mail. If anyone wants to use Gooch, they will need the frame and model codes from your VIN so that they can order any parts they do not have in stock. I usually supply these a month in advance and then verify that they have the parts a fortnight beforehand. Also, for an import they will only estimate the price based on the UK service scope of work (as in the back of the UK service book). This should be about £210 (hence my earlier figures). They do charge extra per hour for working on an import, but I've posted the details for that elsewhere in this ,or one of the other servicing threads. What you end up paying depends of course on whether you need the full suite of extras. Whatever the total, it shouldn't be anywhere near as pricey as you have been quoted up until now! Good luck!

No problem. Tell the truth I was seriously worried for a while there after the Nash / Dingles thing, and Lust2luvs posts. The mechanic's name was Mark, by the way. Didn't get the recepionist's name, but she did put something that looks suspiciously like a kiss on my invoice... And before anyone else spots it, I *did* give thema cheque for £153.35. Oh well, they can have the penny tip!

Righty-dokey, folks. My SZ had its 36000 mile service today. Here is the feedback. Boy, are you guys going to love this. Took my car into Gooch Motors at 13:30, where I planned to wait until it was ready. The lady on the service desk (Autobase) was very friendly and polite and knowledgable and knew what I was in for as soon as I said my name. She said there was a slight mistake on the booking as I was not scheduled until 15:00, but they would try to rearrange things so as not to waste my time on such a lovely afternoon (its been 20deg plus here today). Five minutes later my car was being worked on I double checked about the scope of work and went through the schedule in the service book with her. She made all the right noises at the "extra" jobs and said she would go out and check with the mechanic to make sure he knew which bits to do. I happen to ask if they need to test drive my car. She says yes, but only a few miles. Reading my mind, she says I am welcome to go with the mechanic when he does the drive, or I can skip it altogether. Feeling trusting I tell her its OK, just go ahead as normal. Having made sure I was happy and knew where the coffee machine was, the receptionist let me be. For as long as I was there not more than 20 mins passed betwen times when she asked if I wanted a coffee, or if I was OK, or that she apologised about the wait. About halfway into the service she reappeared saying that my car had platinum plugs so they wouldn't need replacing yet. One "extra" down 1.5 hours came and went (the originally alotted time for the job) and Ms. Receptionist reappears looking like she has to tell me there has been a death in my family. She (very apologeticaly) says the the mechanic is having trouble bleeding the my coolant system after the drain / fill (note: "extra" two sorted ) and my car will be a little while longer. No problem, I tell her. Presently, the service is over having taken about two hours. Before the test drive I am invited into the service area to talk to the mechanic and have a poke around under my car while it is still up on the ramps. He tells me about a couple of minor oil leaks he has found (nothing to worry about). He tells me he remembers seeing my car parked outside when I picked up my brake pads a few weeks back. Ten minutes later I head for the service desk again while Ms. Receptionist makes up my bill. We check it together and I can see all the "extra" items on there. Then she hits the key to total it all up. Wait for it... I told you were going to love this... £153.35 all in. Parts. Labour. Extras. VAT. Everything. Here's the thing. The service is priced up as a complete job. When you ask for the price for a 36000 mile service, they tell you whatever they tell you and that's that. Now, my car did not need new spark plugs (one of the "extras"). The price of that "extra" was therefore effectively subtracted from my bill. Proof positive that Toyota service quotes do include all the extras appropriate for the vehicle mileage. Apart from the slightly longer wait than planned, the worst part of the afternoon was when I opened my breifcase to get my service book out for Ms. Receptionist and exposed a fleshy part of the cover of Loaded that I had brought to read. From her side of the desk it must have looked like I had a w*nk mag in my case. I tell you guys, come to Norfolk when you need your cars serviced. A few quid on petrol, £30 in a B&B, and you'll have saved yourselves a couple of hundred notes. Lust2luv: if you are reading this, send me your e-mail address again. I have scanned in my invoice for you. I suggest you print it, wrap it around a piece of lead pipe and bludgeon your Toyota guys over the head with it until they sort it out. Happy as larry , me.

Bearing in mind I know nothing about boost gauges except that they measure boost: Since it has a fuse inline it looks like (2) is a power feed. I'm guessing that this needs to be connected to a 12V feed - should be plently behind the dash that you can tap into. If that is a fuse, what rating is it? If you need either a constant 12V or an ignition switched feed, you could use one of the radio feeds (either a blue wire with a yellow stripe or a solid gray wire, I think). One is permanent, the other is switched. The black wire is almost certainly an earth. Earth wires behind the Supra dash are white with a black stripe or solid brown and there should be plenty of them about (the radio earth is brown). *Disclaimer: Wire colours from MKIV.com (USA spec) so check everything with a multimeter or test light first.

Yes, there are downsides. If you have big valve pockets then it gets harder to get a specific compression ratio. If you try to raise the piston crown to increase the ratio, then the pockets have to get deeper so one tends to counteract the other. Also, badly designed poskets can create small "peaks" on the piston crown. These peaks will heat up really fast compered to the rest of the piston, and can cause detonation because they will act as ignition sources if they get hot enough. Finally, the crevice volumes (areas which it is difficult for the flame to get into) in the piston will increase, thereby increasing HC emissions. All of these will be engineered out during development so they shouldn't really cause problems in the field. Just makes life hard for us Engineers Just to labour the point about interference V non-interference a little, the way to check for it is to set a piston at TDC and rotate the camshafts through 360 degrees, feeling for contact. If you try to do it the "other way" - set the valves at max opening and rotate the crank, you might miss the fact that the valve head tracks back and forth across the piston crown as well as decending into it. If the valves do not contact the pistons with this test, then the engine is 100% non-interference (free running). Of course, with the cylinder head ON, you will have no idea of how much the valves are missing the pistons by. As a guide the minimum clearance between valve head and piston crown should be 10% of the maximum valve lift.

Ok I'm on it. Check out my thread "Imported vehicles: Toyota's official positon." in General Discussion.

Just checking I designed the valve pockets in the Opel C16XE pistons (the 16v Corsa engine - I'm a Nova boy at heart) when I was a student on work placement, and that engine was definitely not free-running, so valve pockets do not necessarily a non-interference engine make. But of course I have to bow to those who have actually taken the 2JZ engine apart and tried it for real. Excellent news for all of us, I think, especially the tuners!

Hi Martin, Don't want to sound like I'm disagreeing with you, but this knocked my socks off! Non-interference engines (free running engines as I know them) are getting very thin on the ground, especially high-performance ones. Are you referring to the attached blurb from MKIV.com (from the engine technical description)? If so, then I wouldn't take this alone as gospel that the J2Z is free-running. Its common for an engine to have valve pockets in the top of the piston, and they may only have been designed to provide clearance at the normal valve timing, or thereabouts. The TT with its lower compression ratio might get away with it, but I'm wondering about the NA engine. If you have other evidence, then ignore my ramblings!

I will be quadruple checking with them on Friday (should be simple enough to check from the parts they replace). However it ties in closely enough with the other prices I have got in the past for me to assume that it does. I'll let you know for sure on Friday or Saturday. They are official Toyota dealers. I have started using them since my other dealer got taken over (by yet another local Toyota dealer) and started getting all "funny" about imports. We are a bit spolit for choice here in Norfolk! I have a document relating to this which I would be delighted to share. I'll try to scan it tonight. Trouble is I don't have anywhere to host it at the moment (Yahoo! photos will resize it so it will not be readable). Can anyone help?

Git ooooooooorrrffffffffff moi laaaaaaaaaaaand! A bit more info. Just rang Gooch Motors in Lowestoft (where I am going on Friday - not used them before) to double check my booking. Their UK price for a 36000mile is "about £210" all inclusive. UK labour rate: £46.15 / hour (I'm in the wrong job). J-spec labour rate: £59.95 / hour (I'm definitely in the wrong job). but The 36000 mile service is only a 1.5 hour job so I should only end up paying £24 over the UK price (assuming the parts are the same).

Its interesting that that you are getting all the prices quoted separately on top of a "basic service". What do they mean by that? I'm not sure why there is such confusion over the scope of work when it is printed in good old black and white in the owner's handbook. Work-wise, a 36000 mile service for a MKIV should be a 36000 mile service for a MKIV regardless of where you go. Surely Toyota have all their routine services pre-priced on their system? If they want to charge more for a J-sec then they just have to adjust the labour rate, but when one says a "basic service" just includes transmission oil + coolant and another says it just includes plugs, something is very wrong.

They certainly ought to - I double and triple checked enough times with the guy on the end of the phone! There may well be a regional difference. A cambelt change around here costs about £160. When JIC got Abbey Toyota to do one for me before I picked my car up I they were charged over £200 for the same job (mostly labour). Just to p*ss you off even more, when I took my car for its 27000 mile service, the final invoice was about £20 less than the figure I had been given previously (and I got a courtesy car)! Anyway, I have a chance verify (or otherwise) my research this week because I am taking my NA auto for its 36000 service this Friday afternoon. Watch this space...

Any kind of vibration that you can drive "through" (albeit at twice the national speed limit!!) I would normally put down to wheel balance. Does your car wander at all if you let go of the steering wheel? (don't do this at 140 ) if not then its probably not tracking. Difficult to see how a spring could lose its "springyness" by just sitting there for a few months. The difference in height from side to side could just be uneveness in the road where you happened to be parked when you did the finger test. When I let my car down off axlestands after a week I noticed a change in the handling for a little while when I first drove it (seemed a bit softer). I put this down to the shocks being at full extension for all that time. It soon settled down though. If your shocks are new then it shouldn't be them. You could always do the "bounce test" to double check. Maybe one of your wheels has thrown a balance weight? You should be able to get them re-balanced for about £10 and at least it will eliminate that option one way or another.

Check out this thread for the details of the last time we all discussed service schedules in detail.

I'm April 1994. As far as I recall the 6000 mile service schedule with the "C" service only applied to 1993 cars. Anyone care to back me up on this? I certainly run the 9000 AABAAB schedule.

Piran, I am assuming your car is a MKIV. What model year is it?

Strictly speaking since 1994 there has been no such thing as a "C" service for a MKIV. The service schedule runs AABAAB at 9000 mile intervals. Even so after a lot of research by Tony Jefford (ajefford to you and me) he discovered that even a 1993 car can be safely serviced on the 1994 onwards schedule. However, the scope of work is very different for almost every service because items like fluids and spark plugs and valve clearances have to be checked and changed at different intervals. The first "B" and the second "B" are very different prices, but none should be as high as £450. Always refer to services by the interval in miles (9000, 18000, 27000 etc) rather than ABC etc. It avoids confusion.

Old-skool engine mounts used to just be blocks of rubber, usually with air voids in them so as to make them compliant on one direction and stiff in another, thereby controlling the ways in which the engine can vibrate while still supporting its mass. Basically the rubber acted as a crude spring. Advanced engine mounts use the "Hydramount" type of design where you have rubber and voids filled with a fluid. The whole module is like a little integrated spring / damper arrangement and gives much better control over the engine vibration and isolation from the chassis.

Did some checking today. Mine has the "keys in ignition" doing-doing-doing sound and a constant tone for "lights on". I couldn't get my lights to extinguish when I opened the door so I assume my car does not have this feature. Maybe its a model year / option thing? Mine is an April 1994 SZ.

The J-spec cars do have a buzzer that sounds if you leave the lights on with the door open. There is no dipped beam warning lamp. The US-spec cars have an extra circuit that kills the lights (I think) if you leave them on while you exit the car.

My servicing price info is a little bit mixed up, but I'll post what I have found in the bottom of my filing cabinet :-) I asked two dealers (Richard Nash - now Dingles in Norwich, and Gooch Motors in Lowestoft) for a complete set of prices from 9000 miles to 72000 miles. One of them gave me the UK prices and the other gave me a sort of "hybrid" price based on the UK scope of work and labour times, but with the import labour rate and parts prices. Here's the kicker: I have forgotten which is which! Here are the prices I am "working to" (i.e. budgeting for - I have lost the figures for 9000 and 18000miles). 9000: 18000: 27000: £241.08 36000: £219.79 45000: £142.24 54000: £365.87 63000: £142.24 72000: £219.27 Here are the other prices that I have: 9000: £121.95 18000: £179.91 27000: £241.42 36000: £208.59 45000: £121.95 54000: £344.83 63000: £179.71 72000: £208.59 I think the top prices are the hybrid ones. To repeat: these are all inclusive prices. Parts, labour, VAT, and all the "extras". HTH.

Any figures I have posted on here in the past will be "all inclusive" i.e. parts, labour, VAT, and all the extras. Calling them "extras" is a bit of a misnomer really, because if you read the UK handbook it describes the scope of work for A and B services, but you *leave out* the bits that are only required at longer intervals than 9000 miles. Any Toyota dealer should at least be familiar with the service schedule. Fork out £15 or so for a UK handbook, and then beat the service Manager around the head with it! They are quite sturdy and repeated applications to the skull will hurt after a while. :-) Whether or not they know the scope of work, and can put a coherent quote together, if they actually *do* all the work that is specified is another point entirely of course!

Check it out: http://www.rolec.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=3&topic=318&start=20 The 36000 service does have a lot of add-ons: 36000 miles or four years: A SERVICE plus: Change spark plugs (non platinum only). Change brake fluid. Change engine coolant. Change transmission oil. Despite all the extras, because it is a basic "A" service it helps keep the cost down. The next "A" (45000 miles) is a cheapy with no add ons, but that just gives breathing space to save up for the next "B" service at 54000 when they also change the plugs, fluids amd check the valve clearances. This is the one that comes in at £400, I think. I'll try to find the associated price tonight.

I had one of our local Toyota dealers price up all the sevices from 27000 to 72000 based on the UK car scope of work, but using the J-spec parts and labour rates. It was just a guide, but the final prices didn't differ that much from the UK service rates. I can't remember what is included in the 36000 mile service but by coincidence I have my J-spec SZ booked in for one on 17th May. If you search through the threads you may be able to find some of the information because I have posted lots of stuff about service prices and schedules before. What I do remember is that one of the serviecs tops out at almost £400 because a load of other items like plugs and fluids get changed at the same time. I can't remember which one it is until I go home and look at my information, but I'm pretty sure its not the 36000 mile one.

The head is aluminium, but I think you are getting confused with magnesium, or mag-al alloys. They can't be used for long periods for parts in contact with coolant. As far as I know Ali is fine.