Leaky roof repairs - Toyota Prado J90 [Fixed]

Birds of a feather flock together - so the saying goes. This seems to be so very true, at least in the context of my poor old Prado....

Starting from roughly half a year ago, things started to wrong, mainly wipers that could not turn off plus aircon that do not turn on, followed by the most catastrophic occurrence of sudden coolant leak earlier this month. Actually, to continue the story from the coolant leak, after swapping the busted thermostat coupling, my mechanic David drove my Prado J90 back to his workshop to do a thorough check up. Just in case some other component of the cooling system decided to throw in the towel. Since it's there, I asked David to fix the roof and take a look at the clutch, which I felt had started to slip intermittently, mostly while in 3rd or 4th gear.

Now, the details. The paint on the roof had visibly bubbled and popped out in several areas, most apparently at the front end. One particular spot was quite bad - roughly 1cm in diameter. I temporarily covered it with some car decal (cut out a small piece from an unused Puma 4x4 club decal😅). Since it was on the top of the car, and the Prado wasn't exactly low, I figured 99% of the time no one would notice, and the 1% of the time someone might have noticed, never came to my attention.... 😁

David sent a few photos today - seems the roof integrity was compromised in several locations, even over the edges down the A pillars and sides. I was quite shocked, and it took me awhile to reply. Though the greyish sealing didn't look too conspicuous, due to low contrast against the maroon paint, I asked David to go ahead and respray the affected area - as I don't think the seals would do well for long against the harsh weather elements. Well, looks like my Prado J90 will be in the workshop for a little bit longer.

I didn't get a chance to ask about the slipping clutch though. The feeling is that sometimes, after shifting into gear, you step on the accelerator and the car does not speed up, only the RPM rises. Letting off the accelerator and stepping again SLOWLY seems to help. I figured this could mean there might always be some degree of slipping, and invariably would grind the clutch away to complete destruction. Better to get it fixed now, rather than risk breaking down in the most inconvenient of time or place....

Some people ask, how old is my Prado J90, and after hearing it's from 1997, the next common piece of advise is "go and get a new car-lah....". Hahaha, no thanks. I like what I have, and besides, I don't think anything you can buy new on the market today will still be as drivable 26 years later.... 😆

Well, whatever it is, I really hope she gets fixed soon. For now, I'm using my daily 4 door (Honda Civic FD2A) whenever I need to ferry around some friends from work, though it's not ideal due to the extremely low ride height resulting in frequently scrapping the bottom when going over speed bumps (even when I'm all alone)....

Will update again, hopefully once she's back from the workshop.

[Update: 21 May 2023] My Prado's back! Roof is restored, and the unsightly blemishes / rust / holes are gone. Really unforgiving weather we have here in Malaysia, hope this keeps the rest of the interior from falling apart. Luckily we don't have snow, so we don't have to deal with rust as a result of salt they use on the iced roads during winter...! 😅

Catastrophic External Coolant Leak - Toyota Prado J90 [FIXED]

Toyotas are known to be trusty and reliable. And I can vouch for this, backed by my own personal experience. However, no car is indestructible, and my trusty 26 year old Toyota Prado Landcruiser is no exception.

One fine morning a couple of days ago, I had just parked my car in the company car park, ready to face yet another pencil-pushing day (or modern equivalent, since we've long since gone paperless and pencils were only used by old school die-hards like myself). As I walked out in front towards my office, there was a sudden gush of water coming out from under the hood, on to the floor below. If my Prado were a pregnant woman, I'd say it was time to rush to the hospital for a "happy birthday"....

I knew this could only mean one thing - coolant leakage. Or rather, based on the sheer volume of water, something must have burst somewhere. Since there was nothing I could have done, as things were still hot as I had just shut off the engine, I proceed on into the office. It was only in the evening, after office hours did I return to look into the engine bay.

Upon popping the hood, I confirmed that there was no visible remains of water in the radiator, and in the coolant reserve tank either. As there was just water and not steam gushing out earlier that morning, and my car did not overheat during the drive to office, I guess it just coincidentally happened while I was in the car park. Lucky nothing happened in between, as there was really no where convenient to stop along the way.

None of the hoses looked ruptured or decoupled, so I called up my family mechanic, David to help come and take a look. As my car was INSIDE the company, did some alignment with security. Fortunately, security personnel were very nice and supportive - this wasn't their first experience.

David came to take a look. After pouring in some water into the radiator, immediately a stream of water came shooting out from the side of the engine. Fortunately, it was the coupling that connected the thermostat to the hose. Fortunate, I say, as that was fairly easy to replace - provided the part was available in stock and nothing else was leaking. David ordered the part, but we had to wait to today to get it fixed, as it was raining every day. In fact, this morning it was drizzling, but we figured out we had to get it done today, as the company premise was less crowded on weekends. Plus, I didn't want to leave my car there any longer, as that would mean I'd take up 2 parking bays in our already-congested parking lot....

Hose to radiator and thermostat coupling removed (left arrow), revealing the thermostat (right arrow) above the alternator.

It was a quick job, removing the coupling which had a nasty ~2mm hole, as long as replacing the hose. Once done, David filled up the radiator with water. After starting, everything checked out ok - no sign of leaks elsewhere!

This wasn't the end of it - we still had to counter-check and fill up with coolant (as we only used water for now), and so David drove my Prado back to his workshop. Besides, it was time for the regular service maintenance. A word of advice to everyone - no matter which car you are driving, never skip your regular maintenance or use sub-standard / imitation parts. That's a false economy that will come back to bite you some day....

And there you have it, all done in just under an hour. A very big thanks to the management and officers of the company security for their help and facilitating the on-site repair operation. I will share my experience with my team and colleagues - in case any of them find themselves in an unfortunate similar situation.