Thread: Toyota Hilux Servicing

Just a comment or two about Toyota servicing…

The quality of servicing varies tremendously from dealership to dealership. I bought a new Hilux in Perth and drove it throughout Australia clocking up 70,000km very hard kms in its first year. Consequently we experienced seven different dealerships…

The service quality ranged from the absolutely woeful to the perfect 10/10. Some of the shit we were served in two larger QLD dealerships that do mostly commercial vehicles for the mines or the railways was beyond belief. One in particular in Mackay in Queensland you wouldn’t believe if I wrote it down here… The flipside was the small family owned dealerships in smaller towns. A particularly good memory were the dealerships in Devonport, Tasmania amd Port Augusta, South Australia. Five star review for those guys - knowing what kind of mileage and the places the vehicle was going they went above and beyond to check a whole bunch of stuff such as torque on all suspension and mounts etc.

Holding the dealership to account on the fluid changes is vital. The brake fluid is a classic, they will not change it at the specified interval if they can get away with it. At the Townsville service I put a small piece of Sellotape on the brake fluid reservoir cap which was covered in dust and hadn’t been removed since the vehicle was delivered. Tape was still there at the end of the service, as was all the dust, and it was blindingly obvious the rubber caps on the bleeding nipples hadn’t been touched either. And yet in the service book, the brake fluid change box was ticked. That didn’t go down well and resulted in a particularly fiery exchange with the service manager, who credit to him regained his composure and had the technician do the job properly right there and then.

Our local Toyota dealership is a family owned business who are all round excellent. I don’t have either of our vehicles serviced there as they are well out of warranty and I do it all myself. But occasionally I will get stuck on something like a special tool or a specific fluid and they always sort me out promptly and fairly, Plus the service manager has been extremely helpful with proper service manual instructions.

So I guess I have learned over the years that by no means are all dealerships created equal, and it’s always worth getting a second opinion as I have found that quite a lot of large dealership employees don’t know their arse from their elbow.