Questions About My 98 Rav4

[paulnanrod]

I have a Rav4 Freesport and have a couple of questions.......It has covered 83k miles, and there are a couple of problems....

First - the rear washer jet doesn't work. When the stalk is turned to use the washer jet, water gushes out from around the reservoir area......How do I get to this? I can't seem to get in from the bonnet - is it a case of going in the wheel arch?

Next - when the car is jacked up, the wheel touches the floor still......my guess would be a puncture would be impossible to repair. Is this normal, or could there be something up with my suspension?

Last - I have a juddering steering wheel! Only when at 70 mph ish this starts to judder.....any ideas what this could be.

I know all of the above are probably covered off easily by saying it's an old car and with them comes problems, but I want to try and keep it going, so was looking for some help if anyone had ideas!

Thanks

[bothwell_buyer]

I have a Rav4 Freesport and have a couple of questions.......It has covered 83k miles, and there are a couple of problems....

First - the rear washer jet doesn't work. When the stalk is turned to use the washer jet, water gushes out from around the reservoir area......How do I get to this? I can't seem to get in from the bonnet - is it a case of going in the wheel arch?

Next - when the car is jacked up, the wheel touches the floor still......my guess would be a puncture would be impossible to repair. Is this normal, or could there be something up with my suspension?

Last - I have a juddering steering wheel! Only when at 70 mph ish this starts to judder.....any ideas what this could be.

I know all of the above are probably covered off easily by saying it's an old car and with them comes problems, but I want to try and keep it going, so was looking for some help if anyone had ideas!

Thanks

The cars just a youngster.

Rear washer - never had a problem with that - just try to trace back where the water is coming from?? Altho the bottle is into the arch I'd have guessed that the pipework will come out near the top?

The suspension has a lot of travel - remember the first RAVs were built to be soft off-roaders not like the beasts built nowadays. I never trust scissor type jacks and bought a small trolley jack which you can place under the trailing arm at the back or the base of the strut up front....then you just jack up the wheel.

Juddering steering wheel - if its when driving and NOT braking then its wheel balance. If its when braking then its more likely to need the front discs skimmed very slightly. On a car that age, I'd think about getting the wheels aligned by the laser method too.

I have 2 RAVS - one with 80,000 miles and 1 I use for racing which has more than 170,000 miles on the clock - and both are 1994 models.

[MarsKy]

I have a Rav4 Freesport and have a couple of questions.......It has covered 83k miles, and there are a couple of problems....

First - the rear washer jet doesn't work. When the stalk is turned to use the washer jet, water gushes out from around the reservoir area......How do I get to this? I can't seem to get in from the bonnet - is it a case of going in the wheel arch?

Next - when the car is jacked up, the wheel touches the floor still......my guess would be a puncture would be impossible to repair. Is this normal, or could there be something up with my suspension?

Last - I have a juddering steering wheel! Only when at 70 mph ish this starts to judder.....any ideas what this could be.

I know all of the above are probably covered off easily by saying it's an old car and with them comes problems, but I want to try and keep it going, so was looking for some help if anyone had ideas!

Thanks

Regarding jacking up the RAV, I had a 98 RAV4 STAX and took it to Cooper Brothers in Newmains to get a puncture fixed. They gave it to a newbie to prep up, and he had the wheel arch about 3 foot in the air before I spotted him. You need to get it on the jacking point correctly or else you just keep pushing up the arch. There should be a slight indentation on the underbody marking out where to attach the jack.

[mrbilly]

Jacking info if on the attachment

washer pipe has probably just come off

wheel judder (+1 bothy) wheel balance is your first stop

[bothwell_buyer]

just a word of warning re jacking - I had to change a petroltank cos someone used it to jack up the car