Poor workmanship or....?

[Fungi2003 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fungi2003]

Serviced my Prado last Friday and when I came home noticed a fair amount of oil behind the engine (between the engine and gearbox). I crawled underneath the car and tried to find evidence of oil leaks and found a rather large amount of oil on the bash plate underneath the engine. It was obvious that the oil was used due to the amount of soot in it (black).

I called the dealership for an explanation only to find that they *beleived" that oil must have seeped down there when they changed it. I'm going back in tomorrow for them to do a check to ensure that it was the case.

Would you people consider this poor workmanship? I understand that I might be splitting hairs here but how hard would it be to clean up the mess they made rather than leave it there? We are paying Toyota good money to get our rigs serviced!

[troy_i Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close troy_i]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

roger that.... whenever i take mine in for a service raining or not, my dealer washes , vacumns and everything . with this awesome service is the reason why i always take it back there

[Fungi2003 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fungi2003]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

roger that.... whenever i take mine in for a service raining or not, my dealer washes , vacumns and everything . with this awesome service is the reason why i always take it back there

Geez.......thats bloody amasing. I've heard of that kind of service with Mercedes dealerships but not Toyota!

[troy_i Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close troy_i]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

i am frome orange nsw, but i bought car in bathurst and always take it there for a service..

[clifton Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close clifton]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

Serviced my Prado last Friday and when I came home noticed a fair amount of oil behind the engine (between the engine and gearbox). I crawled underneath the car and tried to find evidence of oil leaks and found a rather large amount of oil on the bash plate underneath the engine. It was obvious that the oil was used due to the amount of soot in it (black).

I called the dealership for an explanation only to find that they *beleived" that oil must have seeped down there when they changed it. I'm going back in tomorrow for them to do a check to ensure that it was the case.

Would you people consider this poor workmanship? I understand that I might be splitting hairs here but how hard would it be to clean up the mess they made rather than leave it there? We are paying Toyota good money to get our rigs serviced!

Hi Fungi,
Hmmm, the boys removing the old oil filter must have been in a hurry! looks like they spun off the old filter and dropped the oil down the side off the engine into the pan, they didn't back it off and give the old filter time to drain down its built in drain which is piped by a small diameter hose to a spot adjacent the sump drain plug so all the dirty filter oil falls into the dirty oil drum. :roll: :roll: :roll: sloppy workmanship

[matty Member Find all posts View Profile Close matty]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

wonder why they didn't degrease it? had my car serviced in TAS when on holidays and they vaccummed and washed my car, even lubed up the door hinges. You got no chance of getting that kind of service at a toyo dept in darwin, your lucky if the service advisor can even tell you what they did.

[Bob P Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bob P]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

Give them <mod edited> hell, what sort of customer service do they think this is?

My local dealership can't even get four tyre pressures the same :evil:

I've now investigated alternative servicing which maintains the warranty locally, maybe you should do the same

Vote with your feet :mrgreen:

[Fungi2003 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fungi2003]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

I've come back from the dealership, the service department cleaned the oil and didn't give me an apology, rather mentioned that this was "normal".

Overall still not happy with their response.

[matty Member Find all posts View Profile Close matty]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

In regards to servicing i have had my 07 prado serviced by local mechanics since new, as long as they are certified mechanics and use toyo spec parts it shouldnt affect warranty. i do service every 5000k and not the specified 10000k though. In the service book it just suggests you should use toyo service depts and trained technicians because they are meant to be the experts. In my experience the service depts are more like a sub contractor to toyo anyways as anything remotley difficult has to go to head office for info/ideas/clarification/result.

[JeffH Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JeffH]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

roger that.... whenever i take mine in for a service raining or not, my dealer washes , vacumns and everything . with this awesome service is the reason why i always take it back there

i am frome orange nsw, but i bought car in bathurst and always take it there for a service..

I had my car serviced for the first time at Black Toyota a couple of weeks ago and couldn't believe it had been cleaned and vacuumed when I picked it up, they even cleaned all the dirt and mud out of the engine bay for me! Now if only they hadn't done my handbrake up so tight... :roll:

[BigBoy83 Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close BigBoy83]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

Had my 2007 d4d prado serviced at local toyota dealer and some numb nut , I mean technician, changed my air filter. Problem was the air filter was a non disposable uni-filter with all the appropriate stickers on the air filter box(non disposable airfilter just wash in turps etc.) . Sevice manager was not impressed when I asked if his technicians could read? When they finally found the filter in the bin they tried to wash it with engine degreaser hence one stuffed filter. They had to replace it with a new one.

[IRON-PAWW Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close IRON-PAWW]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

Well.....ok accidents do happen. Nobody is perfect. You would think though that the person responsible would have known a quantity of oil had disappeared into the dark depths of the undercarriage someplace. Then would have taken steps to clean it up. As has been mentioned before, I put it down to the fact that the service depts at many dealerships have become such a production line that anything out of the ordinary can't be given much time. An oil spill happens, it can't be cleaned quickly, a quick job is done and it's left at that. Any more time spent on it makes work on the next vehicle late and so on until the end of the day comes and two vehicles weren't done which makes the owners peed off etc etc. The last service I had done wasn't all that good either, and cost far more than it should have. If I go back to that dealer for the next service I'm going to state simply that the last service was below par, especially considering what I paid. In all honesty though, there is another Toyota dealership within walking distance of my workplace so in all likelihood I'll be giving them a shot at it. Let them know you weren't happy, no need to be nasty, and if things don't improve they won't see you again.

[matty Member Find all posts View Profile Close matty]

Re: Poor workmanship or....?

Gotta agree with you Bigboy83, after having gone through injector drama's wich took seven visits to service dept and about 2 n 1/2 months, after they did the so called reflash on my ECU they forget to retighten the positive battery connection and i couldnt start the car for about 15 mins till i found the fault. Things like this do nothing for there reputations, you just get sick of the old "oopps we forgot to ring you", "its a whole new service team now, better than the last", "Its bad fuel" (even though its not been tested), "were waiting to hear from toyota" aren't you guys toyota. WTF!

as was mentioned earlier its a joke, just a production line. servicing is bread and butter work for mechanical w/shops and they can't even get that rigjht sometimes.