Tell Me How To Look After My Yaris

[Coruscate]

Hi all, hope someone here can help or share your stories of car woe to make me feel better!

My poor Maris has been through the wringer since I've had her with 20K miles in 18 months.

Has had various problems over the past year, most notably when the bracket holding the exhaust rusted off...that got fixed but for the past week I noticed a kind of throbbing/revving noise when I was accelerating, didn't want to see a repeat occurrence of bits of my car falling off on the motorway so I took her into the garage this morning.

Verdict: Exhaust bit at front has a hole and needs replaced, oil sump was also flaking off and leaking and that is getting done today too.

Today is an expensive day for me :( I'm concerned about how quickly the oil sump has gone since last nov, is that just one of those things that can just deteriorate? I live in central/west Scotland so I'm assuming the snow/salt/grit on the roads in the past 3 months haven't helped matters.

How can I keep my yaris going for a bit longer and avoid these problems cropping up again? She currently has 75K miles on the clock and is an X reg, so I don't think it's toooo bad, right? :( I lived with my parents until a few months ago so dear ol' dad always took it upon himself to sort out car things and now I'm on my own I don't have a clue what I'm doing!

Thanks in advance

[Raeman]

The best way to learn about your car is buy a Haynes manual, read it untill you understand the basics and buy some good tools.

The more work you do to your car, the more you will learn. I have fiddled and fettled with bikes & cars all my life so even though i'm not a qualified mechanic, i know how to do things as i have learned myself and saved a hell of a lot of money over the years because of this.

Your lucky in one way as you have a Yaris, these are reliable cars and are so easy to maintain yourself even with little mechanical knowledge.

I would advise you buy a Haynes manual from Halfords for example, i think there about £15-20 but may be cheaper on e-bay.

Buy some basic tools aswell, a ring spanner set ranging from 8mm to 22mm should be enough for any bolt you come across, same goes for a socket set with the same sizes and a good ratchet aswell.

Screwdrivers, allen keys, long nose pliers, mole grips, torque wrenches are all handy to have too, or you can buy one of those monster tool kits from argos and places like that, what have about 200 tools in one big box for everything!

Good luck. ;)