The story of a Toyota Corolla
My 6 month old Toyota Corolla was purchased from a Toyota Dealer and I was very pleased with it.
It was a pleasure to drive and the fuel consumption of the 1.4 litre D4D diesel engine was excellent.
I didn't have any problems with it and was even thinking of purchasing a smaller Toyota as a
run-around for my wife.
I took the car to the dealer who had sold it to me and they kindly took a look at it but said
that it would cost over 1100 pounds sterling to fix it and could cost a lot more.
As a member of Which, (previously the Consumer Association)'s legal service I knew
that under Section 14 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979, dealers have to supply goods of
satisfactory quality and should last for a reasonable period of time so I wrote to the
dealer twice, reminding them of their obligation. Both times they refused to repair the
car and so took the car to my normal Mechanic to investigate.
At this stage I should mention that due to the distance from where I live to the dealer,
I had had the car regularly serviced by a local well trained mechanic who has been excellent.
I insisted that he always used Toyota parts so that warranty obligations could be met.
I took the car in to him on the Tuesday and within a few hours he'd found the problem
which was a noisy bearing in the gearbox. He took photographs of the gearbox before he took
it apart and it was completely clean - in fact as it was less than 4 years old, the gearbox
had never been touched.
In the following movie clip you can see that the bearing is moving around by around 3mm which is why it is noisy.
Once the the plastic around the balls in the bearing was cut out to show the worn bearing you can see why it was so noisy.
You can see from the pictures above (click on them for larger images) that the output
bearing in the gearbox has been heavily worn. Very unusual in a gearbox of this age.
Interestingly enough, when the bearing was removed, there were traces of rust around the inside edge and even more interesting, the new bearing was from a different manufacturer. Perhaps Toyota are keeping quiet about a manufacturing problem?
The mechanic took the old bearing out and replaced it with a new Toyota bearing and the car is back to its quiet self again - a joy to drive.
Total damage 512 pounds.
I am now waiting to see what Toyota UK say about this. I can always take the matter to the small claims court if all else fails.
