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...! 😅
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