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Hehe @gayanath you seem to be on top of this topic so i guess ur experiences on owning the car for a long time has given u the insights to maintain it on the dot. Eitherway, ill keep in mind the next time i plan on switching cars to keep my eye out! But i gotta disagree with some stuff u said, Unless u have faced a situation where you are on a hard day of work back home past 10 and your car suddenly start to go to limp mode and dies off under 10 KM from its warning time, you might not know what im talking about. Being stranded on the side of the road of A1 and having no way to abandon the car for the night because of the guys who keep stealing headlights or mirrors, and then again if you're unlucky to have that happen on a weekend and AA saying that they are unable to tow it back to colombo or to pay a hefty sum. Id rather have my car being reliable and trustworthy than run it the way it can with the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. Spending a few extra bucks to make sure your car is in good shape makes it better for me and anyone who buys it after me can have a peace of mind knowing that I didn't abuse it. Also about running on a dead HV battery, Not sure how your friends did it but the fact is that only certain cells die off in the battery pack so you end up having an uneven voltage across the pack. The HV system will indicate this as an error but will keep trying to run on the battery from time to time. In a friend's prius with a dead battery, where the car will start up and run for a few km then die, it will restart after a while and then run then die, Sounds fun huh! . Anyway not an expert so there might be ways to work around this. Final point of buying cheap, well for the cost of used aqua (2012-14) there are hundreds of new or recond hybrid kei cars (2018 +) that does a little under 15KMPL in the city and 24 outstation and these come with KOBE or Sterling. The hybrid battery in these are a lot cheaper and depreciation wise i guess it is not that different.

This is one of those rare occasions I am actually agreeing with @gayanath...servicing and costs associated with it have been completely blown out of proportion in Sri Lanka mostly by service station operators. They are literally a mafia by themselves and it is because of them and the cheap parts suppliers that has held back this particular side of the industry for ages. Cars are not that fickle even when it is loaded with tech. Figuring out the Hybrid system status in a Toyota does not require processes that need space age technology. If the car is showing errors..do a scan...heck..do a scan anyway...(for the life of me I cannot imagine why plugging in a scanner costs so much in SL...in Vietnam, East Timor and Malawi the agent plug in scanners for the heck of it..for nothing as well !). I know a poor guy who had to pay 7500LKR to get a sensor on his front bumper and another one behind the grill emblem cleaned off mud. WTH ??? About not all errors trigger check lights....used to be true...but with newer systems all the critical components do trigger check lights. If something is causing a system to start going bad..then regular checkups might detect it and fix it before the check lights go on. Again..cars are not that fickle that the check engine light goes off as soon as something goes slightly out of the stock calibration. Yes...cleaning the Hybrid system's vent is not that complicated. As long as the vents are cleaned it will do just fine until an annual check or something of the sort (Japanese cars are subject to an annual maintenance check hich is semi-legal..and this checks all these). Let's not even get in to the whole big deal of washing the under carriage ! Geez...not rocket science ! Then there is the whole Toyota/Nissan/Honda oil. None of these manufacturers make oil. They buy it from other suppliers. But car owners are told otherwise. But then you cannot blame the owners as well because the parts suppliers just bring in all kinds of fake and cheap ##@@! Manufacturer's parts are not the best that is out there for the car.... Anyway...done with my rant....

My car subject to frequent bird dropping and washing the car in that frequent not possible due to busy schedule and no proper place to wash at home. Therefore i was looking a product to remove such stuff which are harmful to paint in local market. Does any on this forum can recommend such a product with their experience ?

Exactly @Devinda_Z. The wear and tear of the engine while cruising in a highway is about 10% of the stop and go traffic.

It'll take me a while to drive from Mt to Kelaniya @Kavvz?

@Amila_Silva are you trying to exact revenge on @Thushara 90 for sins from a past life or something suggesting a Pug 206?! ? The March K11 is a decent car ?

well it says so in the comparison page in Japanese. Interesting is why they are shifting away from Hybrid and focusing on improving the IC-engine, by the introduction of Direct Injection also in an established Model. It wont be surprising if the next generation Harrier comes without Hybrid at all, or Full electric.

of course they do. New cars are bought only by Taxi,Rentacar and Other Fleet operators. Roadworthy certifications are not issued even for a 20 year old vehicle with a single Dashboard warning light ON, a Check Engine Light is a big No NO.. Basically a Prius with Check Engine light is useless and cant even be sold. So you are saying the people who design and build these Cars should change these safety rules, because some Smarta$$es in Sri Lanka have invented that they can drive with the Check engine Lights ON? ?

I also have a Ford with wet timing belt and recommended is ACEA A5/B5 similar to FK6. So agents use Castrol Edge Pro or Castrol Magnatec Professional, both are ACEA A5/B5 certified

Reply is already above. Quote: * BTW, actually there are some parameters giving some indications, but those service guy's (who scan your car in SL) don't know about them.? ..unquote. So, 99% scans will not add value for you because they don't know how to interpret results. They will tell you no issue in your car until you get a error code. Theoretically and technically, yes you are correct and 100% agreed with you..... But we should know the context where we are. We are in SL. Cost matters for everyone except few people. 1. 90% of us repair cars with used parts or cheap spares. Manufactures not recommending it but we are doing. 2. 95% garages are technically not suitable to do repairs due to not availability of qualified persons and tools and equipment. Even you have no guarantee that your brake system (which is extremely critical safety system) repaired correctly and durably by the bassunnahe (until you are a guy having the knowledge). But it's happening here... 3. See how many heavy vehicles (ex: sand trucks) running on the road without signal lights, brake lights, and zero treads on tires. Above should not be excuses in safe world but, withing the context we are living, we should be practical as well. If we are living in US, EU or Japan we never buy used cars. Isn't it. (even we do not have warranty, no responsible agent for our cars because we purchased them as reconditioned) For this particular as well as specific case (I mean HV battery fault), we have not yet identified any safety issue or technical issue by running with the fault. All safety systems as well as all other systems are working well. And car will not die by 10km as @HaeylM suggested. Anyway, this not means you should not repair the or replace HV battery. Definitely you should do the repair, but you will never being stranded on the side of the road. @HaeylM

Many of these companies are indirectly owned by guess who.... the Chinese government! Ex: 1. PSA's controlling shareholder (despite a relatively low %) for the past 7 or 8 years has been Dong Feng. They bailed out PSA from the brink of bankruptcy and have been pumping money to the group since then. 2. PSA and Fiat Chrysler has merger plans. Again, promoted by Dong Feng. Dong Feng founder is none other than Chairman Mao himself. If the merger goes through, 12 brands in one bucket for Mr. Xi Jinping 3. Daimler has two significant (but not majority) Chinese shareholders... BAIC and Geely. That's Mercedes under their belt. 4. Geely already has five brands under them. They will eventually buy Ssangyong. That's 6 more. 5. SAIC will eventually control GM. Already China market is bigger for GM than US. Another 5 brands for them. So that's about 25 brands directly or indirectly owned by the Chinese government, not counting their own brands and reborn brands such as MG and Rover. Japanese car companies have survived the Chinese invasion so far thanks to their complex Keiretsu system. Most car companies are eventually owned by trust accounts in banks. Ford has struggled but survived thanks to the majority voting rights of the family, despite having only 6% shares. BMW has also kept things among the family so far. I guess all this wil change after covid.

@Amila_Silva your point about idling has legs however to be able to gain a more scientific view of how the oil has fared (& protected the engine itself beyond visual inspection) what we ideally need to do is carry out used oil analysis https://www.blackstone-labs.com/tests/standard-analysis/?session-id=snfax42tr1q2vlz15xhbxx45&timeout=20&bslauth=&urlbase=https%3a%2f%2fwww.blackstone-labs.net%2fBstone%2f(S(snfax42tr1q2vlz15xhbxx45))%2f @gayanath i think we discussed this on some other thread

enjin 100% ranin 100% ex ok

We had a kelisa - nice car.The auto did 10 KMPL flat - nothing more nothing less.. simple to maintain car. Interiors are a bit rattly now since they also are about 14-15 years old.

Think of all the wagon-r's that were used as taxis and rented out ones that were used to haul gravel (you saw the video on Facebook ?) those are probably getting re-sold as well. Anyways cars depreciate - this is a norm this was not the case in the past simply because of the prevailing tax structures then and there were no 'new' options. In the 2010's the hybrid wave made sure the 1.5 L ICE cars depreciated...then the hybrids themselves lost value pretty quickly since never hybrids were available for a tad above the same amount - remember Sri Lankan's love the new number. When the next tax revision came the kei's came to the party but at the same time the hybrids actually had a mild spike in re-sale value only to go down when the batteries failed and DCT issues came up. Then with the emergence of Turbo charged 1 Liter cars/Suv's people got on the band-wagon and naturally even the best car to be ever made in the history of all parallel universes combined (Premio 260- rumored to have been designed by god himself) depreciated somewhat (the faithful of the Premio-Allion club will say otherwise) but yeah that's the new norm so it's something we should accept and move on. Cars are no longer an investment on wheels.

Lankans should get into restomods more. Racing gadgets and some modern stuff (and even modern drivetrain parts) on an old body. Any memory on the color of that escort you mentioned?

Basic SW knowledge. A proper scan Reads the ROM, with live Frames can even read the RAM. Therefore you can see errors that are not yet confirmed as leading to a unhealable system failure (Check Engine Light). Before a Check Engine error is shown to the driver, many real-time errors discovered while driving are filtered/debounced. But it doesn't mean these Errors are not important, they are indicators of a disaster waiting to happen. for most raw-errors the steps before showing a Check Engine Light are as follows. IC detects Hardware Error -> HW-filter -> Error Debouncing (event Counter and Time-based) -> Writein RAM -> Write in ROM at end of driving cycle -> same error detected in n (=3 usually) driving cycles -> illuminate Check Engine Light So saying that its OKAY to drive with check Engine light ON is wrong and unsafe. As an Engineer you should discourage people from doing so, its even an illegal state to drive in US,EU and Japan(like drunk driving).

Could you name few examples ? (I mean the things you could identify by scan for preventive actions before triggering check engine) * BTW, actually there are some parameters giving some indications, but those service guy's (who scan the cars in SL) don't know about them.? Reply is only for the particular matter he raised related to HV battery (I clearly mentioned "HV battery" first). HV battery issue will pop up check engine (nothing like "don't see ready light") but the car is safe with all other systems functioning properly. Toyota could have been made the car as un drivable (no "ready" mode) with HV battery fault if necessary, but they made this drivable. So my friend........ Toyota design engineers should immediately fire from the Job and no one else should hire them after that (permanent blacklisted) except for Janitor jobs before me. Isn't it? ?? The reply is not related to any other issues. (not because of this being a law class, I didn't mention the exceptions ??? ). The cars running with HV Battery issues are facts, but do I recommended ?? Anyway, do you know how many Toyota Hybrids (specially Aqua, Axio and Prius) are running on SL roads with HV battery faults? We should know the reality as well .........

Take it to a competant electrician, I got a pair of fogs for my old car.30 mins and 1000 bucks later it looked like factory. The guy gave me a switch off a Nissan that fit like a puzzle!

Pearls cannot be touched up if I'm not mistaken. In which case, you will have to do the whole bumper.

Wow. The new world order is clear then (at least Automotive wise...) Oh and you can add another brand to your China grouping: TESLA ! Tesla China's Majority ownership (around 80% I think) is a consortium of Chinese banks. Given that Tesla China is positioned to produce the majority of Tesla's vehicles, the stage is set for TESLA CHINA to suck Tesla dry.