Toyota Vios - 20K Service Experience

Today, I'm off from work (again) due to the "short work week" directive again. Best take the opportunity to send my wife's Vios in for servicing at the service center at Cheng.

Made the appointment by phone for today at 10.00am. Morning seems to be the most popular choice for people to send in their cars for servicing, as the customer lounge was "full" at least until 11.00am. Now, I clarify on the term "full". Toyota, to their credit, made their customer waiting lounge rather spacious, which was a boost to the comfort of their waiting customers. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of empty space (and therefore, lack of chairs). I stood by the magazine rack for a good one hour plus, until there were seats vacant.

For the 20K service today, it took roughly 2.5 hours, with my car finally ready at 1.30pm. Could have been faster if I had opted to forgo the wash and wheel alignment.

From the look of things, labour cost amounts to 50% of the total service charges. Looks like wheel balancing and alignment costs are also quite high. Labour cost to service my Honda Civic appears to be cheaper (example the 15K service labour cost was only ~RM60).

Well, at least we don't travel around so much, so servicing is only required every 4~5 months....

Toyota Vios Club Malaysia (TVCM) back online!

After being offline for over a month, the Toyota Vios Club Malaysia (TVCM) website is back online! Reason for being down in the first place was given as - database corrupted, fault of the web host, Cubematch. While the forum is back online once again, it seems that they've only managed to salvage data up to Dec 2007 only, so that means 5 months' worth of posts have been lost forever!

Well, we all know which webhosting service to avoid in the future, don't we...?

TVCM offline - for good?

Haiyah! Turns out that the Web Portal for the Toyota Vios Club Malaysia, TVCM, has gone offline. Has been down for 1~2 weeks now. During my recent TT session with YY, D and XXXTRYM at Old Taste Coffee, Malim, I understand that the official word is the site has been hacked and had to be pulled offline. Fair enough, but looks like with no news from the committee on how much longer the site will stay on ice, it's anyone guess as to what the future holds for the car club....

Well, I really hope the system administrator gets the forum back online pronto. Good luck guys!

Vios Key Stuck in Ignition!!! [FIXED]

 My wife's Vios is nearly 1 year old, and already it's giving me some minor problems from time to time. The latest one happened last Friday. Tried to get the key out of the ignition, but try as I might, it just wouldn't turn all the way anti-clockwise for the key to come out. Now this is a pretty funny situation. This basically meant that I can't go anywhere and park my car in public. Sure, I can lock the car with the spare key, but this is just an open invitation for someone to break my window, open the door and drive off.

Representative image (but you get the idea....)

The Toyota service center was not open on Saturday, so for two days, I had to park the Vios right inside the porch, and block it with my Myvi and Civic (better to be safe than sorry).

Well, managed to send the car to Toyota to check today. Guess what, they weren't really surprised, because they've encountered a similar case before. After hearing the Toyota people talk this way, you can't help but wonder how many more common problems they know about, but aren't telling anyone....

Anyway, they estimated a repair time of ~2 hours, not counting the waiting time. Since it was just 9.00am, and I'd have to wait until nearly 10am for someone to send me to my office, I took the option of walking instead. My office wasn't really far, just ~1km away, which took me around 15 minutes of brisk walking to cover the distance.

Unfortunately, my old tennis shoes had just reached their end of life halfway through my hike. The sole of my right shoe was literally dangling off! Not so good when this happens in the middle of the journey. Luckily, I managed to find a piece of string on the road, and jury-rigged a temporary fix by tying my shoe back together so I could walk the rest of the journey. At the office, I looked around for some industrial strength glue. Unfortunately, the product that used the Loctite glue had already been obsoleted, so I managed to get my hands on some UHU glue equivalent. Now, this wasn't the ordinary UHU glue that you buy from the stationery store. Being the industrial type, you actually need to mix it with a hardener so that the entire mixture can actually dry. I found out the hard way as ~2 hours later, my shoe was being loosely held together with a wet gel!

My colleague Juliyana managed to loan me a pair of her slippers (which were 2 sizes too small, but I had to make do with whatever I could get my hands, uh, feet on).

The sole never really stuck onto the shoe, and came off after taking a few steps. So, I walked with my "sole-less" right shoe to the car park, where I got a ride from my cousin, Melissa, back to Toyota. It seems that they were right. A wire from a sensor that detected the gear was in the "P" position had come loose, and this prevented the lockout mechanism on the ignition socket from releasing the key. They had to disassemble the entire center column to fix this. Fortunately I wasn't the first, so they knew exactly where to look. While I was at it, I did ask the SA if there was anything that could be done with the sound coming from the rear suspension (there is a krak-krak sound every time someone gets in or out of the rear seat, but no sound when the car was moving). He just told me that all Vios seems to have this problem, and even affects Altis too. It's because of the separate drum mechanism of the handbrake that slips when passengers get in or out of the car. Looks like we have to live with this one. Sigh.... :(

So I managed to get my car back at 12pm, just before lunch. First destination from there? Back home, of course, to get my usual working shoes!

3rd Service - Toyota Vios

Been busy as usual, for the past week or so. Got lots of things to update, but very little time to do so. Best start with the short ones first.

Today, sent my wife's Vios for 3rd service. By right, need to send close to 10,000 km mileage, but it's been 6 months already, with only 8,800 km on the clock. Better send in before the Chinese New Year.

Made appointment last week for 8.30am this morning. Toyota has only 1 service center in Melaka, which is not open on weekends, so settled for an appointment early this morning. After dropping my wife off at her office, I proceeded to the Toyota Service Center at Krubong....

Arrived at ~8.20am. Already, the parking bays were full. It took them awhile to attend to me. I was directed to counter #2. I don't understand why counter #1 and #4 were empty, though there were staff there, but not attending to anyone....

While waiting, a nice Indian lady served me a sandwich and a cup of hot Nescafe. The SA attended to me at 8.35am. Lucky she didn't say I was late, as I was visibly sitting in front of her counter for quite some time. Anyway, I was told to come and collect my car at 11.30am, or worse case, at 1.00pm.

Fast forward to now. I just collected my car. Went there at 12.00pm, got car only at 1.30pm. My car was visibly ready at 12.20pm or so, but still I waited for my SA to return from lunch around 1.10pm. I believe that they can improve on this to get the cars rolling out as soon as they finish - right now there is a lot of time between stages.

Well, the next service will be at 20,000km, which at the current rate of use, would be some time next year. I think that I'd better send in at 15,000km, which is still an awfully long way off (given that most of the time we take my car instead of this one)!

Xtreme Nights 2007 @ Car Park A, Bukit Jalil

Last Saturday, right after my appointment at KL Auto, I made it to the Xtreme Nights event at Bukit Jalil to join Kenjiez and Takashi24.

Didn't know what exactly to expect, this being the first time attending such an event.

It was already dark by the time I got there. Actually, it was REALLY dark, as there weren't enough lights in the correct places.

There were lots of cars, and even more girls, and really, really lots of photographers around. The cars were really pimped up, the idea being more for flashy and bling factor, rather than performance. These were strictly for display purposes, as there was virtually no more boot space left, making them impractical for everyday use. Besides, who would dare to park their show cars unguarded in the streets of KL?

For the girls, they were all over the place. I think that there was a lot of pushing and shoving as hoards of photographers crowded around them. Well, I think that if the situation was a bit more encouraging, there'd be more opportunity to get some better shots.

Was walking around, managed to find the Kaitenaz booth area. Wanted to look for my friend, Naz, but unfortunately, he was no where to be found....

Towards the later half of the evening, all attention was diverted to the center stage, where there were some stage events. Let's see, there was a display of yoga (or, in layman's terms, "how the heck can that guy bend like that?"), Capoeira (Brazillian martial arts that's more like dancing), more dancing by the girls and a group of guys, and more yoga display. The action was quite high and far up on stage, so, being armed only with a Nikkor 85mm F1.8 and a Tamron 17-50mm F2.8, I was pretty isolated from all that action. Hmm, next time, I will come better prepared. That didn't stop the photographer hoard from lining up all along the perimeter of the stage barricade, which meant I had to stand even further back from the stage....

Left around 10~11pm, as I and Kenjiez were heading straight back to our hometown. Arrived home at midnight, and got some well needed sleep, as tomorrow was yet to be a busy day....

A little about myself

A little self-intro, for those who are interested....

I'm an engineer by profession. Work for a multi-national company, managed by locals, so it's not really that different from a locally owned company. Working in a support group that has to "support" a 24 hour, 6.5 day per week Production group, I'd say that leaves very, very little time to indulge in other things. Yep, there's some truth in Dilbert cartoons after all....

Been married for almost two years now. Expecting my first child next March. Hence, time is become ever so scarce a resource.

In my free time, I like to take photographs (digital, I'm not old enough to have lived through the grand age of film). My latest hobby is GPS tracking. More on my interests later....

I'm a somewhat active member of the 8th Gen Civic Club (8GCC) and also the Toyota Vios Club Malaysia (TVCM). Mostly active on the forums.

Well, so far so good. Physical activities are quite limited - I have a session of badminton once a week which I miss more than half the time due to - work (why else?). Other than that, I have some skills that I never use anymore, like bowling, tennis, swimming, cycling, chess, and carrom just to name a few.

That just about sums up who I am - just another typical guy in today's society....