nerdstrike

Me too. I've had one or two aberrations over the last few years, but mostly things work as intended. The car definitely has too many reasons to beep.

The beeps can mean several things: If you open the door before the engine is off, it beeps at you to tell you the ignition is on. Mainly useful when you've had radio on without starting the engine, and then get out. If you lock the door, but one of the sensors tells it a door, boot or bonnet is not latched, it beeps to tell you it's not fully secure. Commonly it's the boot, which can sit closed without latching. If you try to lock the door with the key inside, it should refuse to lock and beep. There is a different beep which sounds (I think) when the fob battery is very low on engine off, but I might be imagining that now. There is a light on the dashboard to go with it. Check your boot and bonnet are latching well. It could also be some iffy wiring on the sensors. Also check where your spare key is. Lastly, try locking at arm's length in case it is detecting your key and believing it is inside and not outside. I miss having just a key+fob. All these measures stem from having a key you don't manipulate.

For a moment there I thought you'd wired your speaker cables through the fuel tank! 😅 I reckon the focal tweeters are the stronger part of the package, so they come across as a bit forward, what with being on their own on top of the dash and the mids are coming from the bottom of the door. I dialled down the tweeters in the OEM setup too, but that was because they were very harsh on the ears.

A trip to the baths is kinda interesting. I went to Sendai for work and we ended up with 20 nerds with laptops lounging around in bathrobes - a strange sight indeed! Gender is segregated for the bathing and the little towels are not there for your modesty! It's far removed from Tokyo, but I had a curious time in Nagasaki - you can really see the effect of it being the only point of entry for European traders, and the peace museum is appropriately harrowing. Human bones melded with slagged glass and such. I found it almost impossible to eat bad food, irrespective of price. You can eat very cheaply if you want to, but you should absolutely go all in on Sushi. Most train stations will have little places where the chef makes up your sushi right there in front of you. On the other hand, anyone with a sweet tooth will be struggling by the time your trip is done.

+1. My large Halfords torque wrench won't measure down to 18 Nm I don't think, but I suppose there is a time and a place for precision. Sometimes a tweak will do. My tip is get the grease right. The wrong grease in the wrong place can lead to reliability and maintenance issues later.

Additionally the keypad can be used to reconfigure a few minor parameters, like how sensitive the auto-headlights are and such.

I've had it happen a few times, but barely more than once in a year, and my car has kept working normally otherwise. Your guide on battery condition is the turn-over RPM and whether it ramps up quickly or not. I think it's a transitory issue with air temp and humidity, in that it makes a bad guess about how much fuel to put in and then takes a while to find a working solution. If you had a manual key, you'd probably stop and try again and it would start.

Sluggishness comes from a variety of sources. Some might include: Poor fuel quality Fouled intake valves Sticky actuators Weak spark/fouled plugs Collapsing catalytic converter blocking the exhaust Binding brakes VVT fault Brake binding can be identified usually by a surprisingly hot brake disc after you stop, and blocked exhaust can manifest in hot smells and glowing exhaust parts. If you're running it on 95 octane, you might put the intended super grade fuel in, and it ought to recover some top-end power. An "Italian tune up" can reap benefits with sticking valves, provided the engine is in good order. Otherwise you're ragging on a sick car which isn't very sympathetic. The spark plugs shouldn't be due yet, and they're a pain to inspect on this car, so maybe look elsewhere first. If you have an OBD reader, it can be very useful to log and plot the airflow reading. A healthy graph will climb with the odd spike all the way up to 7200 rpm, whereas an airflow restriction or fuelling/ignition issue will plateau much earlier. You can also check fuel trims to see whether the ECU is correcting heavily for some issue. If the car is otherwise ok, you might give it a rag and then immediately poke around in a layby to see if there are any clues as to what is happening. I had a Mk7 celica too, right up until the oil rings started letting the oil through and the sump emptied within 300 miles. Then I had to let it go... shame about that, it was a nice first car.

They're muscly little speakers! I would add that the original brackets are pretty uninspiring. They might resonate or buzz if they were handling the 40W those are rated for, what with them only being attached at two points.

Mine does it sometimes depending on the weather and RPM. It's a fairly harmless sounding light rattle that clearly comes from the gearstick area. I recall there being a fix but I can't find it just now. I believe OP is talking about a much more clattery sound.

£150 to test a battery! I'm glad you kicked them into line, as it sure sounds like they were charging £600+/hr to whip the battery out and connect up a load tester. I don't know that I'll get many more years out of my 48 Ah battery either, all it takes is one big holiday without a trickle charger...

If it was an RX8, I would already be thinking about a rebuild, an engine mount would be sagging, there would be bubbling sills, the coolant sensor warning would be permanently on, I'd be changing plugs and coils for the second time and I would be spending 50% more on fuel. It's a much better mannered car so far and the Toyota spares are a bit cheaper. I don't believe it's that unusual for car club enthusiasts to see a few engine failures, as they ask the most from their cars and make "improvements". My cause for concern is that there are fewer '86s on the roads than there were RX8s. That might play positively or negatively in future.

You can't get deep bass from a single 6.5" driver without porting (or massive throw), and you certainly can't do that in a door cavity. Sometimes there's no substitute for having a bigger cone. I suspect you'd get more effect out of the units if they door cards weren't quite so flexible. You can really feel the door bins thrumming at higher volumes. The bluetooth unit on the Toyota headunit seems to have a serious lack of gain, but it sounds reasonable enough from a CD. A better head unit may help, but then so would a dedicated amp.

I wouldn't consider a recall or two unusual on a car that's not a direct evolution of a predecessor. The window rollers are clearly a weak point, and the wheel bearing is disappointing (depending on what you have done with and to the car). It's bad luck with your current issue 😕 I've had one recall, a surprising number of cracked windscreens, but otherwise nothing wrong that can't be fixed with a good detailer or ding remover.

Sure enough, toyota.co.uk now quotes these numbers. £250 does seem awfully large for an oil change, air filters and full body paint abrasion. Could be a price adjustment after weakening of the pound I guess, but I don't like it! It sure looks like spark plugs will be extra.

Does that mean they've figured out how to change spark plugs? Or perhaps it's a franchise-specific thing?

Perhaps we can settle on an international standard of "yellow light o' doom".

FWIW mine runs on V-power most of the time. The only times it has responded poorly was when I had to use Esso Supreme. BP ultimate is also fine. I've never seen a CEL in the car yet, but it's only 5 years old.

Have fun on Thursday! The big stop from north of 110mph into left-tight-right is an absolute hoot. Especially when there's a sideways MX5 at the end of it.

Lesser warnings are stored as pending. Then reoccurrence within an off-on cycle can promote it to a fault. It's more likely that you had a code pending, and the switch off at the petrol station gave it a chance to confirm. Non-flashing fault codes are usually relating to efficiency and sensor failures, so the car usually works but may have reduced capability, such as if the VVT system is on the blink and you can't get max power at high RPM. Or, if you've got a decat, it might just be noticing your emissions are off. Get a bluetooth/wifi code reader off ebay or borrow one. A quick diagnostic can be useful for determining whether you should complete the journey, or think about limping to a garage. Also - the standard car is mapped for 98 RON, it can run on 95 but you'll lose top-end power and hence fun. Were I you, I would fill up with Tesco 99 by preference.

The Toyota all-in price for a year 6 service is of the order of £600. Half of that is the spark plug change I think. £80 for the plugs, and a tonne of labour to fit them due to the awkward location. It sounds like they might be pricing the plug change as if they hadn't already taken the engine out to do the recall work.

Perhaps in the inevitable post-survey conclusions he can reflect on the difficulty of asking well-phrased but clear questions and sample answers. Some of the options were not very natural answers.

Suits you sir!

My tip for first trackday is to leave the VSC on (probably in sport mode). If you have the skill to fool around with oversteer then fine, but most of us are not as good as we think we are. It won't limit you unless you're really good or drive with fists of ham, and it might just save you from spinning out at a bad time. Some people think stability control is emasculating, but I prefer to have backup until I know my way around the car and the track. Lauren can drift everywhere, but I suspect she can outrun me with only three wheels. Top priority is to learn the lines - an experienced driver in the passenger seat helps loads with that. I benefitted hugely from guidance on my first day.

Interesting! I've not heard of this particular plastic rocketship. Anything weighing 725kg with power to spare is going to shift. Handling must be a bit Porschey with that weight distribution.