Newbie From Lancs'

[owd bob]

Just joined the forum to see what was happening in the Rav 4 owners world, my Wife and i are the owners of a 1998 5-door Silver VX, which we've owned for nearly nine years now, we've towed a small caravan and various sized trailers with it over the years and up until just recently we've had no mechanical probs' with it at all and its sailed through every MOT with ease, but like all vehicles the time as come for some major work to be done for its next MOT. Mainly front brakes and suspension replacements ..all parts have now been found on line and cheapish, we are just waiting for the help of a good friend to help us get the work done before the mid' Winter MOT. We both really love the car and want to keep it going as long as we can, its done 166,000 miles now and its starting to need a tidy up inside and out, we feel that these Ravs will become classics of the future and the early ones are seldom seen on the roads as much these days, so we'll start to treat ours as such from now on. We've just recently found a replacement drivers side front electric window mechanism for it after the original failed three years ago! its an hard part to find having a 5-pin socket on the VX version, hopefully its a good salvaged one and will arrive in the post tomorrow, the window motor ran fine..its the cable that snapped. We were lucky enough to get a scrap donor Rav 4 a few years ago, although it was only a three door version it can be used for spares, mainly for the engine, axles and gearbox bits etc. so it will hopefully help us keep ours going for a few more years yet.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Hello Mark - welcome to Toyota Owners Club.

[owd bob]

Thanks for the welcome, just like to add we once had a 1989 Corolla estate which we ran for several years until it got written off and the Daughter has just bought a new Auris... :D

[Raistlin]

Hi, welcome to the club. .. Enjoy

[Uncle Buck]

Welcome Mark - I'm all in favour of a bit of mechanical recycling :)

[owd bob]

Welcome Mark - I'm all in favour of a bit of mechanical recycling :)

It has to be done, times are hard for most and these older Rav's are simple to do mechanical work on yourself without any modern computer expensive diagnostics to go through every time you need to replace a part, its probably one of the last generation of vehicles you can still fettle yourself