Here at work (Large mining company W.A.) we have hundreds of Rangers that they introduced into our fleet over the last 7 or so years to meet the 5 star ANCAP rating when the hilux didnt meet, they are now desperatly trying to get rid of them all because the maintenance is huge. there must 20 of them just parked up down at light vehicles on this site alone. I know the light vehicle supervisor and he just smiles when someone says they are looking at a ranger. Mind you I think in civilian life they are ok but on the mine they cop a flogging where the Toyota's seem to take it. Problem is now the wait times on new vehicles is causing issues.
That surprises me Brett. I sold my workshop almost ten years ago so don't get to work on or see what cars and trucks are causing owners grief, only what I hear these days. A mate up until 18 months ago was working at Weipa in the mines. He mentioned at the time they decided to move away from the Hilux and Colorado due to so many problems and was really turned off by the Hilux's. He was in the workshop and said they had run out of engines and Toyota couldn't supply any to get 16 Hilux's back into service (all less than twelve months old). He also mentioned Toyota didn't support the customers like they did in the past. They also moved away from the Landcruises and bought Rangers and a few Isuzu on trial. He said the same, they all got driven hard like rental cars at a bucks party. The Rangers weren't perfect but better backup support and fewer problems. Dave also told me they were trialing new Rangers that were driverless. They mainly carted parts around from the store to site jobs to mechanics. He said it was so weird seeing a Ranger turning up to a machine with no driver. He was very impressed the the repair requests had been reduced by 90% and any problems mainly related to overloading. Must be some real space cadets driving the company utes up there.
My Toyota experiences.
I had Hilux's since 1984, thirteen of them in total till 2016. Had a fantastic run, Bullitt proof utes until 2001. Then I started to have a few problem which mainly involved me fixing them myself. The local dealer didn't like doing warranty work or didn't know how to fix them. I got onto Toyota customer service and they just say talk to your local dealer. Wrote a few letters and still not much happened. They eventually sent out a so called state Toyota mechanical adviser to sort out the many issues the ute had. He fronted to my workshop fully equipped with a pre response bull shit printed list to read out to the customer and fancy Toyota folder. He knew how the system worked and said his hands were tied, felt sorry and knew the problems were wide spread and Toyota were trying to play them down and away from the media eyes.
The last new Hilux I purchased a SR5 manual duel cab 4x4 $56,000, picked it up from the dealership 5 minutes away at 3.30pm and straight to my workshop. Locked the workshop up at 4.30 pm to go home and take the family for a drive in the new car. Wouldn't start, rang the dealership (Windsor Toyota) told them my problem. Workshop manager said they couldn't do anything for three weeks because they were busy. My company did outsource work for this and other local dealerships. I got onto the dealer principal but he way only interested in going home because it was now 5.00 pm on a Friday afternoon. At this stage I was still calm. I asked for him to return the Hilux I had just traded in but he said they had already loaned it to one of the workshop staff and they didn't have any loan cars available. Then I got aggravated, I mentioned we had a tilt tray in the workshop and I was going return the new Hilux and dump it across there driveway blocking it. This didn't go down to well and they thought I was getting a bit hard to get along with. I ended up finding and fixing the fault which took me two hours. I had 6 major faults and 7 minor during my inspection on a car that was now only five hours old, and a grand total of 18km. I had only clocked up 4.5 of the 18km. Drove it around for the weekend then parked it across their entry driveway at 6.00 am Monday morning locked and I had the keys. Got six messages on my phone by 7.15am. The next six months was a long story but again eventually ended up fixing most of the problem myself and at my expense. Last Toyota I owned.
Guy trying to sell a 2019 Ford Ranger atm with 34000 km but with a new engine going in under warranty because of injector failure ☹️
Stay away from the new ones
Last edited by Valencia; 06-08-2021 at 06:51 PM.
They had Rangers at the coal mine I work at as well. They were shocking. Couldn’t get them to engage 4WD, had transmission issues. Hiluxes and Landcruisers are there now and they don’t seem to have as many issues. However those light 4WD like Rangers and Hiluxes really should never enter a mine site, they are only really road cars.
Landcruisers seem to get the rear brake lines ripped off regularly. They also are hopelessly underpowered when you start towing lighting plants around.
The absolute biggest pieces of crap are the Iveco 4WD buses on site now. Do not ever buy one of those!
From what I can gather here at work transmissions are a huge issue as well as electronics. I think mechanically they are ok although I know they had a lot of chassis cracking issues and there was a Ford fix for that. I had a brand new when the new evolution came out I remember Ford came to site and we all did training on the advanced features like auto hill descent etc. My ranger was my own vehicle at work and no one else drove it, it was never driven hard and never off sealed roads and was mostly off the mine site and just around town. At 30,000ks the transmission just completly failed. They ended up swapping out the transmission from a low k's wrecked ranger. The other electrical inspector has that vehicle now and it has done 80,000ks and the transmission is very clunky again and he refuses to drive it any distance incase of failure. Light vehicle workshop has said they wont change out the transmission again and just drive it until it stops as they are all going for auction as soon as they can get replacements.
Last edited by brett0004; 07-08-2021 at 10:31 AM.
All those Rangers need to be in the upcoming "Danger Ranger 9000" that'll sort the crap ones out!
Last edited by Innuendo; 07-08-2021 at 02:28 PM.
Selling HJ 253 Engine
Engine Number QR718*** | 19M5 Clock Casting at 6 O'Clock
19th December 1975 Suit HJ Late Dec 1975 to April 1976
Bugger, I'm not sticking up for them but at least they are fitting a new engine under warranty and not patching it up or bull shitting like they tried with my Hilux.
Item number one on my four day old Hilux warranty list was "ticking at idle. (suspect faulty injector dribbling)".
Toyota had the car for two days. Went down to pick it up after the 13 items were supposable rectified. They handed me an invoice for $245.00
I said you have made a mistake as my car was under warranty. They grabbed the workshop Forman who explained the injector fault was caused by water in the fuel and they had to clean out the entire fuel system, then told me to take it up with my local fuel station. I smiled and laughed and said it must have been delivered with water in the fuel by you guys because it was delivered last Friday and the car had only done 400km and I hadn't needed any fuel yet. He asked if I had washed the car and I must have let water fuel into the fuel system somehow. Ha Ha Ha are you serious.
I asked to look at the car and show me exactly what they had done. This idiot still didn't twig that I was a mechanic and the paperwork had my company's name Axis Truck Repairs on the warranty forms. We lifted the bonnet and I said how did you guys manage to work on my car without making a mark, disturbing the dust and fitting every clip and clamp exactly as it was fitted from the assembly line. I than asked to see the old filter. Five minutes he come back with an old cartridge fuel filter. The filter he showed me looked like it had done 80k-100k km and was black from engine oil leaking into the injector pump. After looking at it for a minute I wiped the top and found It has Ryco GUD manufacturing on it. Starting to get a bit angry I mentioned this isn't the filter out of my car for three reasons, 1) its not a genuine filter 2) its come from an engine with an injector pump problem probably a old Landcruiser and 3) its to long to fit inside the Hilux plastic canister. My next words were stop F**king me around I wasn't born yesterday. He went away for five minutes come back and told me my filter must have already been pick up by the recyclers. PFFF.
I started the engine and the tick was exactly the same. Then this bull shit artist told me it was normal. I mentioned I had probably changed a dozen sets of Hilux injectors in the past 18 months, and it's a common fault and I know what to listen for when they start dribbling and it will burn out a piston eventually. His comment was if you keep driving it with a problem it will void any warranty. But this is why its here you fool. I told him straight if your not prepared to fix it I will replace the injectors and book the job out to them at $135.00 ph. He quickly told me if I did any repairs to the car I would again void any warranty. Almost yelling at him I mentioned that Windsor Toyota sublet repairs to us and because he hadn't worked their long he probably didn't know. Then the usual comment "we are factory Toyota trained technician's and your not.
Me; ok so we are off to fair trading then, Him; its your choice. Me; Fair trading will be the second letter I send, the first letters will be the media.
Ten minutes after arriving back at work Windsor Toyota spare parts section rang me and said they would deliver a set of injectors to our workshop and credited my account for $450.00 to cover expenses for our labour time, and had removed the $245.00 invoice because there was a mistake in booking it on our account. What a load of bull shit. And more insult 4 out of the 13 warranty items were repaired. Did the rest myself and got them to supply the parts.
Yes I'm a very pissed of ex Toyota owner. Never been near a Toyota show room since.
Another mate of mine has just bought a 2021 70K Hilux. 4000 kms its going back to the dealer its makes all kind of noises inside the cab and door trims rattle
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