Buying a diesel RAV4 with high mileage (100k+)

[Bassius]

Hello everyone!

 

First of all, i'm new here. My name is Bas, living in Germany and looking to buy my first Toyota. I'm coming from a Volvo V70, but since that one died on me i'm now looking for a diesel Toyota RAV4 (or Avensis).

Unfortunately we are forced to look at cars with max 120.000 miles on the clock. Most of the diesel's that I see for sale here are the 2.2 D4D D-CAT engines which apparently have a fair share of problems (EGR, head gaskets, etc.). Is it, due too their higher mileage, to be expected that these issues have already been fixed on the occasions that I'm looking at? Or should I expected the head gasket problem for example to reoccur every 60k miles?

Are there any other specific things that I should be weary of?

Thanks!

[152bobby]

My rav4 is a 2011 D Cat and has done 140k (miles) so far, owned it since it was 2 years old and had 18k miles, the only "blip" of ANY kind I have ever had, was that Toyota had to do  forced regeneration to clear the dpf at about 80k miles, but I put that down to the short stop starts I had to do at that particular time.  Other than that, never really any issues.

But please note, that EVERY service has been done by Toyota UK on time every time and this will continue until I part with it.

[Avalon]

My parents 2008 2.2 is north of 100K last I looked, my old 2005 2.0 is nearly at 140K, the 2014 2.0 is on 86K, while the 2.2 had known issues, plenty of them do decent mileage without significant issue, those that don’t are expensive to fix.

[Dippy]

My 2008 DCAT has 185k km, daily journeys of 2x20km round trips (school run). Cleaned EGR twice, changed it once.  I changed the DPF about 4 years ago, not original Toyota but a good one for 250+fitting. Had a fifth injector problem which took a year to diagnose (Toyota were rubbish for that) and while diagnosing it my mechanic removed the EGR. I am always nervous about the engine but still love the car.  Just replaced all the shocks and bought Michelin Pilot Sport tyres for it (I got a better price than normal) which are so much quieter than the Bridgestone Duelers. Bought a new Battery last week.  So I'm hoping it will run for a few years yet, even if I do see the occasional stain on top of the expansion tank.

My situation is a bit different as I'm in Portugal and new and old cars cost literally twice as much as in UK, so it is worth fixing things rather than dumping it and buying a replacement.

[MikeMPG]

My Rav4 2007 2.2 diesel has over 150k miles on the clock and still running fine, it had a gearbox bearing failure at around 90k but was repaired and no further issues with it.