Buying Advice

[suek]

hi everyone,new member here,just wanting some advice.

i currently drive a land rover freelander,which has become somewhat troublesome of late and one of my neighbours is selling a rav4.

it's a "y" reg 5 door 2l. automatic in metallic blue,it's in very good condition and i took it for a test drive today and it drives really nice.

i am just looking for some general advice,is there anything in particular to look out for in this car?any specific problems to look for?and what mpg can i expect from it?

thanks

[petershaw7]

Hi sue k

I have two of these .. P ref and r reg one here and one in Uganda

I get just under 30 on a run on motorways London to North Wales . The Uganda one really works hard but only problems have been air con . We changed clutch before going to Uganda that was quite a job but we did cam belt and water pump at same time . One has 165k the other 135 k . No real problems great to drive and fun to own .

I paid £600 for each of them one one year ago the other 2 and a half years ago

Good luck

Peter

Sent from my iPhone using Toyota OC

[crofter]

Hi Sue and a very big welcome to a great club

As you can see I drive the same year model and can only praise it (fingers crossed)

Make sure when you test drive it that it changes gear smoothly as some people have experienced problems in this area but by no means all.Tthis was found to be curable if checked in time with a remap of the ECU. If left unattended damage will occur to the drive chain. As stated not all develop this problem and It would seem unlikely to happen after this length of time

Regular servicing is preferable of course.

As far as I am concerned I have a cracking motor with a bullet proof reputation

Hope that helps

Once again welcome

Del

[crofter]

OOPS forgot to mention that the automatics only give a return in the low 20s but as i do not go far now I am willing to put up with this as I am really happy with it.

The "Y" reg came at the change over from the Mk1 to the Mk2 but I had the Mk1 before this one now and that made me want to replace it with the same model after some-one wrote the first one off for me. As it turned out it was a Mk2 that I found.

Both as good as each other

Del

[firemac]

We have had 4 RAV 4.2s including an 02-reg VX auto that we bought new & ran for 11 years & 90K miles. No problems apart from a broken serpentine belt (i.e. fan belt but drives other eqpt as well) and the ECU re-flash for the autobox which occurred at about 85K miles and cost £250-ish to repair by ECUTesting in Derby.

Best car we ever had. Highly recommended.

[suek]

thanks everybody for the encouragement and warm welcome to the site.

i have taken the plunge and bought the rav4,no doubt i'll be back for more advice from time to time.

i live in a semi-rural area and as i go horse riding it's important for me to be able to rely on my vehicle's off-roading capabilities.

one of the places where i go is a very steep track into a quarry which gets very muddy in winter and although my freelander coped with it mostly,i did get stuck a couple of times.

what's the rav4 like off-road?is it fairly competent?the freelander is manual and the rav4 is auto so will that affect the off-road performance?

thanks again.

[firemac]

thanks everybody for the encouragement and warm welcome to the site.

i have taken the plunge and bought the rav4,no doubt i'll be back for more advice from time to time.

i live in a semi-rural area and as i go horse riding it's important for me to be able to rely on my vehicle's off-roading capabilities.

one of the places where i go is a very steep track into a quarry which gets very muddy in winter and although my freelander coped with it mostly,i did get stuck a couple of times.

what's the rav4 like off-road?is it fairly competent?the freelander is manual and the rav4 is auto so will that affect the off-road performance?

thanks again.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how well the RAV can perform off-road. It's an auto so you'll need to learn a different approach from what you've been used to in the freeloader. The RAV has one of the best engine/box combos that I've come across and compared to your LR, the RAV's engine is much more responsive (we had a freeloader in the family a while back & it was a clumsy cart horse compared to our RAVs not to mention utterly unreliable and costly to run).

Consequently in difficult situations I've always found that keeping the box in 1st (Low) and using the throttle gently works well. Let the car get on with it on its own and just keep it pointing in the right general direction.

I'm no off-road expert but I've taken our auto RAVs through some pretty rugged farm tracks (which on one or two occasions I didn't think were my best ideas!) with no problems. Left to its own devices, the RAV will cope very well.

Enjoy!