Head Gasket Blown On 2002 Yaris D4d After 44k, Surely Not !

[bill_belfield]

My Yaris Verso D4D has tirelessly and reliably been doing it's business up until 3 weeks ago. Just completed 200 miles of M6/M5 including the snail crawl across Bristol and the over temp warning light has come on. Looked under bonnet and there was coolant everywhere. Called Green Flag, very good service, gave me a hire car and transported the car home. Booked it in with local Toyota dealer straightaway, who drained and refilled coolant, bled the air out, did a block test for exhaust emissions in coolant (no problem found).

My concern was, something blew the coolant out, be it high temp or exhaust gases, but the latter had been ruled out. Put it down to 20 miles in 2 hours across Bristol on a hot day, paid my 90 quid for coolant service and problem diagnosis and drove off.

3 days later, coolant blew out again, no high temp light but noisy engine. No warning, running OK then rough.

Took it back to dealer, a bit of poking around and reckoned radiator was the culprit, so replaced rad and thermostat, another 375 quid.

A couple of days later, same problem. What the hell is going on. If it's been block tested and they can't find any evidence of blown head gasket, what else could it be. Coolant pump maybe.

Now i've been reading the posts on here, and 2002 D4D engines do have head gasket problems, but surely not after 44K miles. The car has a full service history with the dealer, and they claim that there has never been a problem with 2002 1.4 D4D engines blowing their head gasket. They have quoted roughly £1300 for just taking the cylinder head off and replacing the gasket. Now I read that the new gasket to replace the faulty ones needs a revised cylinder head. This is going to cost a fortune.

Is there any comeback with Toyota here, surely if there is an issue with 2002 1.4 D4D's which require a revised cylinder head and gasket, surely they have identified a problem and should be partly liable for funding some of the repair costs

Has anyone else had a simliar problem, and have they got a result with Toyota funding some of the cost. What would be brilliant is if someone could point me to a Toyota memo regarding their acknowledgement of this problem.

Apologies for the rant.

[Chris81]

I can't help you on the technical front but I can sure understand your frustration and need to rant. I'd be pretty gutted with having spent £500 to be no better off, and the prospect of £1300 with still no guarantee of fixing the problem. Aren't there any fault codes coming up? Otherwise, as you say, they could go on and on changing parts and still not fix anything. Was the radiator and thermostat just a hunch?!

If I was you I'd ring the Toyota customer services number (should be in the Yaris passport) and see what they can come up with. If they're not willing to help out, then you've got to work out how much the car's worth, how much you'd spend fixing it and if you think its worth it. Or you could try a different dealer as they vary enormously (like all dealers, not just Toyota!)

[alanbradley]

This is a known issue with the earliest 1ND-TV engines and is marked out as a "watch out for" in every buying guide I've seen. I don't know why your stealership has taken so long to diagnose it...

Your car's out of warranty so why not go to a local garage instead?

Chris, you can't call up codes for a D-4D using the "diagnostic paperclip" method (sadly) you need a code reader of some description. A ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader should do it though.

Good luck,

A

[Chris81]

Chris, you can't call up codes for a D-4D using the "diagnostic paperclip" method (sadly) you need a code reader of some description. A ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader should do it though.

Thanks for clearing that up, but shouldn't the dealer have a "ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader" in order to diagnose faults? I would have thought that if a toyota dealership can't diagnose the fault, a local garage would have no chance. But then again, I don't think dealerships are the miracle workers that many of us think they are!

[bill_belfield]

I can't help you on the technical front but I can sure understand your frustration and need to rant. I'd be pretty gutted with having spent £500 to be no better off, and the prospect of £1300 with still no guarantee of fixing the problem. Aren't there any fault codes coming up? Otherwise, as you say, they could go on and on changing parts and still not fix anything. Was the radiator and thermostat just a hunch?!

If I was you I'd ring the Toyota customer services number (should be in the Yaris passport) and see what they can come up with. If they're not willing to help out, then you've got to work out how much the car's worth, how much you'd spend fixing it and if you think its worth it. Or you could try a different dealer as they vary enormously (like all dealers, not just Toyota!)

Thanks for the advice. I bought Toyota because I wanted that legendary reliability, what this means though is the mechanics at the Toyota dealership spend most of their time faffing around fitting after sales parts and doing services, and not getting experience of real fault finding. And at £100 ph.

[Yaris SR Kid]

To be honest if they have replaced all those things and not fixed problem then they should pay for £500 worth of your head gasket replacement!

[alanbradley]

Chris, you can't call up codes for a D-4D using the "diagnostic paperclip" method (sadly) you need a code reader of some description. A ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader should do it though.

Thanks for clearing that up, but shouldn't the dealer have a "ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader" in order to diagnose faults? I would have thought that if a toyota dealership can't diagnose the fault, a local garage would have no chance. But then again, I don't think dealerships are the miracle workers that many of us think they are!

Yeah, they'll have an OBD2 reader, but it won't say "cylinder head gasket failure" outright.

A local garage actually has more chance of having seen and being able to recognise a major failure than a dealership. Dealerships normally only look at newish, regularly maintained cars and spend most of their time doing routine tasks like servicing. Local garages deal with older cars with higher mileages which are more likely to succumb to serious faults. As a result they have more experience with it.

Just out of interest, why did you buy the diesel when the car's only done an average of less than 10k a year?

A

[bill_belfield]

Chris, you can't call up codes for a D-4D using the "diagnostic paperclip" method (sadly) you need a code reader of some description. A ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader should do it though.

Thanks for clearing that up, but shouldn't the dealer have a "ScanGauge or other OBD2 reader" in order to diagnose faults? I would have thought that if a toyota dealership can't diagnose the fault, a local garage would have no chance. But then again, I don't think dealerships are the miracle workers that many of us think they are!

Yeah, they'll have an OBD2 reader, but it won't say "cylinder head gasket failure" outright.

A local garage actually has more chance of having seen and being able to recognise a major failure than a dealership. Dealerships normally only look at newish, regularly maintained cars and spend most of their time doing routine tasks like servicing. Local garages deal with older cars with higher mileages which are more likely to succumb to serious faults. As a result they have more experience with it.

Just out of interest, why did you buy the diesel when the car's only done an average of less than 10k a year?

A

Well spotted. At the time I was commuting into Manchester to work, a round trip of 40 odd miles a day, plus all the other running about so was doing maybe 2000 miles a month. It only takes a few frustrating mile long tailbacks and watching motorcyclists whizz by that you think, Hmm, Yamaha 600, get at least an hour back. And so it was, 33,000 miles in 3 years on my XJ600. Now job has moved to within 3 miles from home, so need neither deisel or bike . Doh !!