Just spent more money than I could afford on my Townace because I fell in love with the beauty of her, but I know zilch about cars & engines etc so now Im panicing that the diesel consumption will be high and someones just told me about the cam belt and oil changes and automatic gearbox fluid and on and on.Are the running costs high and will garages fleece me? Where can I go to get genuine help??
- (#8320) Nigel, 4 Feb 04 15:41
First good decision was to buy the Townace, second was coming here to the BoK.
These vehicles are extremely well built, have loads of room, lots of quirky goodies & are extremely tough.
They do however have one major achilles heel, which if left un checked can be quite costly, that is the cooling system.
You have to imagine that these things are built as luxury city cars, not high speed cruisers, when they were in Japan, they spent most of their life in traffic ticking over or at low revs, they come over here & we thrash the bol***** off them, this results in them overheating & cracking the head & blowing the headgasket.
There are some simple things you can do to avoid this happening to you, firstly read everything you can from the main site & the archives, then get the coolant drained, flushed out & refilled with a 50/50 mix of good antifreeze & distilled water. Get a new genuine Toyota float type cooling system cap & check the integrity of all cooling system hoses. You may also want to carry out some of the modifications that others have used on this site, namely electric fans to replace the standard viscous fan, modified thermostats, cooling system alarms & mosified gauges.
As regards all the other items you have mentioned, they are just the same as owning any other car, cambelt is required @ 100,000 Km (62,000 miles) oil & filter @ 3,000 miles, full service every other oil service. Oils & fluids check & top up as necessary.
As regards getting fleeced, if the garage you go to does a sharp intake of breath & says 'well it's an import mate' then go somewhere else, these vehicles are quite commonplace now and any good garage should have no problem dealing with them.
As regards parts, no problem, service parts from you local factor, genuine parts from Toyota dealers nationwide.
Hop this helps, regards Rob.
- (#8320) Rob Drinkwater, 5 Feb 04 11:04
Hi Nigel,
I am in the same boat, just purchased my first townie There is allot of advice to gain from this site and Ace Answers is a virtual bible of information.
Good luck and enjoy
- (#8320) Patrick, 5 Feb 04 14:23
nigal you havent said where you live .im sure somebody can suggest a decent garage when we know your area . and this site and its archives should be able to help fix most problems
- (#8320) mark, 10 Feb 04 17:34
i am thinking of buying my first townace but dont know much about them,it is a 1990td auto with 150,000km on the clock they want £1,595.does this sound like a good deal and what problems should i look out for, please help because my funds are very restricted and i dont want to waste my money on the wrong car
- (#8320) jason rowe, 13 Mar 04 05:19
Unfortunately can't give you a guarantee that the Townie you're looking at is going to be any good, however, if you go to Ace Answers, there is useful information on purchase there.
I would also say it is worth taking for an extensive test drive, as most problems on Townies are to do with overheating, give it a hard drive for several minutes on a motorway, if it overheats don't touch it, if it's OK look further at it.
Certainly £1595 is cheap for a Townie, although 150,000 Km is a bit high, but still under 100,000 miles so not excessive. At that kind of price, you shouldn't be too disappointed, even if you need to spend a few quid on it.
Best bet is to do what I did, I looked a thirteen of them before I bought our one, nothing like being choosy.
Good luck.
Regards Rob.
- (#8320) Rob Drinkwater, 15 Mar 04 15:43
i have bought a 1994 townie 60.000 k on clock
excellent cond for 2.900 was this a good price
- (#8320) merv, 16 Mar 04 04:04