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@iRage @kush @JayZ thanks for the Adv! the slight opened box trick helped get through easier. They taxed 15% of CIF value through fedex but it was worth it as I saved close to 70K off the local market price of a similar model.

I am in the market for a laptop and one of my friends volunteered to ship it for me through fedex. I am wondering if anyone has experience importing a personal laptop to sri lanka and clearing it from customs?

interesting... Is it like a drivetrain transplant from a compatible car or a custom build?

Who is the mastermind behind this marvel 😂

cant trust the ODO on cars bro.. We sold our family nissan sunny years ago at 141K and it was advertised at 160K 4 years later... so you really cant say the exact condition of the engine. But, in general the oil levels do go down little by little specially if you keep your car in a hot climate area like puttlam, jaffna or trinco and used a thinner viscosity oil like full synthetic 0W-20 or 5W-30 . But if its considerably a large drop then you might be burning small amounts of engine oil, it wont show up on silencer smoke. To overhaul the entire engine including valve seals will be very costly and to cleanup a worn engine would bring in more problems sometimes. Better consult a good garage (not TL, they will convince you to a ridiculously expensive repair) and get an estimate to narrow down your choices on the repair.

if you are in the market for tenders, look at embassy websites for their tenders too. You can get a decently maintained good car for a relatively low price and the tenders are not as competitive as for leasing company or govt tender cars. Just the only compromise would be having to run the car with a blue number plate.

Firstly, Suzuki every is a KEI van which means its a N/A 660 CC engine. Passo and Vitz are not kei cars, they are wider, bigger than an every and have 1000-1300 CC engines. And therefore the car doesnt need to rev at very high rpm to maintain speeds unlike a suzuki every therefore it will do better on fuel ( At high RPM the car does really bad on fuel) .. this is why even cars with 2L engines do well on fuel on open roads because the engine is barely under stress. (axio did 16 KPL outstation on 1NZ 1.5L engine fyi). Meanwhile an every would be redlining easily at 100KPH. Secondly, these cars are much more advanced in their engineering to make them more aerodynamic along with sophisticated fuel saving systems (specifically the eco driving mode, auto engine stop etc.. ) Thirdly, it once again depends on driving pattern of the person driving, there is no such thing as an "experienced driver" who would do magical fuel figures, anyone who knows to drive can learn to master a light foot for better efficiency. As a side note i would like to say that its not a good idea to never empty your tank. The fuel quality in sri lanka is bad and there are plenty of contaminants in the fuel that will gunk up on your fuel tank overtime if the old fuel is left there for a while. better empty the tank once in a while and let the car have some fresh fuel.

It would just be a waste of money cause you will eventually wear up the new tyre even more comparatively (the thread difference even minute, would cause the tyres to grip the road unevenly at average speeds and braking. Best option would be to replace as a pair always, its safer for you as the tyres would grip better and also wear less because of even contact. Dont get chinese ones like Hifly, go for Taiwanese or better.

for me, for my passo DBA-KGC30, there was a specific driving and maintenance pattern to get good fuel figures. Keep the idle stop on and always keep more than 3 bars of fuel on tank... I did regular maintenance at company with castrol fully synthetic 5w-30 oil, original filters and general care... ii used to never neutral on traffic and mostly keep on D, even in hills the car had the hill anti roll feature so no need to keep brakes on in hill traffic. Acceleration wise i always had a pretty light foot and had the eco light on all the time. Outstation not as light on acceleration when overtaking but generally i try to maintain between 60-100 with not a lot of vigorous acceleration unnecessarily. My honest figures: Colombo hard traffic 9-11 KMPL Suburban traffic like boralesgamuwa etc.. 13KMPL Airport drive from colombo : 14-16 KMPL on normal road in mild traffic, highway is around 16KMPL Outstation the highest ive hit is 21KMPL and once it said 25.7 KMPL but my journey calculation was more or less 21-22 KMPL. averagely it always does around 17-19 KMPL for outstation. That being said.. if your car's engine etc. are worn out (as in a car with reversed mileage) it might not be as efficient as you would expect it. Hope it helps!

Go to delkanda, there are plenty of recon dealers who brought doctor sunny parts long time back from half cuts to even gearboxes. Hunt around and you can get a good deal on a recon part.

If you are looking to swap cars every now and then, it wont be as viable due to the tough resale market. but, for personal use most cars rebadged by micro stand up well with good maintenance.

Its gonna take more than a year for covid to get back to normal all over the world. Given the policies in our country its gonna be a while. But who can say for sure, things are unpredictable. When Will Covid Pandemic End? Vaccine Calculator Shows 7 Years at Current Rate - Bloomberg

@iRageI guess because there are way few EX-s in good condition, the prices have gone up for the ones in market? I saw a 2010 one a while back but the interior was hacked up with ralli art badges and fake carbon trim stickers 😂

Firstly, you can never predict the future of a car but generally, If you want fuel economy and relatively low maintenance then go for a newer and popular toyota hatchback like Passo or Yaris/Vitz. Aqua is a little more expensive and older but more economical on petrol, repairs are expensive tho. If this was a year back then id say Axio 161 but now prices are skyrocketed so a much better sedan would be Honda FD civics, Lancer EX-s and Mazda 3. Axio 141 is not worth 4.8 mil if you are buying a secondhand prius or any hybrid, keep money in hand for battery replacements and battery health checkups. For a SUV: Vezel has a DCT issue so Honda CRV 2008-ish would be in your budget after 2006-ish RAv4's.

these are aftermarket installs so you can start by checking if the +12V from the battery is working (the power line to the controller), then check the ground connection of the welcome lights to the door switch. Finally if both these are fine then it could be a burnt out LED in which you need to buy a new light set for it.

Just my humble input, I had a reverse camera issue on the sedan once and at the end of the day it was an issue of improper grounding. The infotainment system gets the reverse camera signal from your reverse light bulb, and due to unearthy wiring from when the camera was installed, it sometimes took a while to display the back camera and just stayed on radio. the fix was to tighten the ground wire for me. If you have a weekend to experiment with, try running the reverse camera signal wire and complete the circuit without having the car on reverse and check if its the rev camera being faulty or the head unit. you can test it better if you have a front camera input, you can connect the video cable from the camera and check if the video input still works. This way you can eliminate having to replace a headunit for a 2500 LKR camera. As @iRage mentioned, most of the cars imported to SL don't come with audio setups installed unless they are personally imported cars with the factory head unit that controls stuff like the A/C (in nissan Teana etc..) and in some cases like the Nissan X trails and leafs that came with the integrated infotainment system. The rest of the cars come with no stereo and there are places in Dutugemunu St. that most of these car sales people take the cleared cars to install japanese domestic audio systems. The eclipse, Carrozzeria, Gathers audio systems mostly found in these reconditioned cars are stuff that were installed later on. The best way you can identify is if you take your dash apart, the wiring for the audio will be messy and connected with crimps to a harness rather than a direct fully shielded harness that directly plugs into the system (seen in Xtrails with the factory system). Its a gamble when it comes to these systems since you never know if the system is a 100% reliable as a brand new system that came with the car from factory. Secondly, there is a well known heist that happens at customs where they steal SD cards of cars that get cleared with japanese systems so chances are if your car did come with an installed system from japan then it probably got its SD stolen at the docks. I personally think you are better off upgrading your infotainment system to a locally distributed system like a Kenwood, Pioneer or JVC that you have better control over and have more features such as bluetooth,RCA for a subwoofer etc compared to the Japanese unit because the SD cards in the black market go upwards of 8500 LKR. This of course is a personal choice. But I still think you should have refused to buy the car when the dealer couldn't give you the spare key and handbook.

AFAIK, some people buy the ebay/Taiwanese headlights that come with projector beams on a smoked headlight cover... these ususally cost around 40+K for the pair when imported, But personally i think the OEM/JDM lights look a lot better on some cars rather than these retro headlights, its ultimately a matter of opinion tbh. Furthermore, some of these aftermarket lights dont disperse the beam properly and sometimes are just all over the place compared to the light spread of the OEM lights. Later civics had OEM crystal lights with the projector and some people just imported these and then smoked them to have a simillar look (I had a friend who did this, it costed more than importing Taiwanese headlights) Second is what most these motorcyle guys do, its more of a DIY project to buy the projector beam, then cut the headlight housing and fit this projector light that comes with the halo rings, its around 6K a piece and 12K a pair. Thing is once again you need to do a hell of a lot of experimentation to make sure your new retrofit has a proper light beam that is properly spread out to help you see the road and also not blinding people driving by. Not sure if there is a place that does the fitting, but the auto accesory shops down darley road sell this projector beam light assembly.

Yeah its a garbage upgrade because its just cosmetic to impress people around i guess , I saw a lot of these converted ones when i went car hunting. It was obvious that they had been converted with because it doesnt work like how the original push start works. Original push start cars you need to keep your foot on the brake for the car to start up, and just pressing the button will initiate accesory mode. But in these converted ones the car just starts up when you click the button. Besides like you mentioned, the touch button on the doors dont work and even in the ones that work, its a lot weak compared to an original.

Congrats on your new car! Axio is a great car for city and outstation driving and the engine is plenty reliable. Yes its possible but there are 2 options to do so and with very different ways of working. First option is cheaper which is done at P*TCO L*NKA where they will install an aftermarket system with push start, but the button is not OEM nor is the remote, Plus the touch bar in the door is not there so it wont work as well as a car that came with push keyless entry. If you want to do an original conversion then you need to get the entire system including door handles and boot handle from a scrap car in japan. This will be more costly. There are many Aquas with the conversion done at P*TCO L*NKA, Check with them and see how effective it is.

its just a storage compartment sort of thing they put in place of the push button start. you can pull that knob towards you and hide some cash inside the plastic barrel. Im guessing you bought the non hybrid petrol base model with the manual AC dials?

If you dont mind a older but pretty decent sedan, May i suggest B13 (Doctor) Sunny?. We owned one long time back for a while and it was an amazing car and is pretty popular in the local secondhand market. You should be able to find an automatic one for under 1.5 Mil and the GA15 engine combined with the good fabric seats and ample interior space, you should be good on long distance drives compared to a crammed up hatchback. The maroon interior ones are more popular and if you can find a super saloon version you will get power mirrors, shutters, RPM meter and auto AC. But there are EX saloons with decent options too maybe except the base model diesel ones. Car does around 8-9 KMPL in city and 11 outstation on regular fuel but better to keep more than 100K on your pocket for general repairs cuz its an old car. (Body parts are pretty cheap tho with body pannels costing less than 8K, bumper at less than 12K and each hedlight at just 4K in delkanda😂😂). Car does come with EPS but sadly no airbags in the base model.

During this time if you are to purchase a car you are going to have to pay a large premium if you plan to buy in a hurry because most of the sellers are just demanding big money thinking that someone will eventually pay up due to their needs, but most of the cars on sale are on sale for a long time unlike the times prior to covid where cars would disappear from websites in a day or two. So the ones reasonably priced(still a little higher than they used to be but not ridiculously overpriced still move but slowly). Check quicksite (Ik###.lk), there were some G grades for sale at 4.1-4.3 mil and if you are patient you can talk down the price to a fair amount because there are plenty cars coming on sale daily so the sellers will be leniant to negotiate even a bit. Plus if you dont mind a wagon, you can get the 161 Fielder (even hybrid ones) at the same price range. Hek, before Covid the 161 Axios went for 3.9 -4.2 Mil and 2011-13 lancers were at 4.2 mil so keep in mind your depreciation if car prices go down after the end of Covid. As for the Civic FD, as long as you can verify the mileage with service records and you feel like its it, go ahead for it. Just remember to do your research on the car and make sure you wont regret not knowing any issues you are going to expect in future with the car. (not joking but sometimes when you see a car you just know that its the car for you, it just talks to you and you know that its gonna be your next ride no matter what . Its not about the options or the price at that point, its the connection. ) Given this situation, the suggestion by @Hyaenidae about the emgrand 7 seems to be a viable option given its price is barely affected. But due to the mentality in Sri Lanka about the whole japan car thamai market cars baila you might have to be patient to sell it compared to a regular JDM or Euro import. Nissan Tiida is also a pretty comfortable car with really soft seats although not so popular and you should still be able to find one under 3.2 Mil, Even a full option one with keyless entry and auto AC. In general, reliability of any car comes down to how carefully it has been taken care of. The axio i used was at 200+k mileage and still was on the original engine with no issues on the pulling power etc and the interior trims were still looking fine. Meanwhile there are cars with lower mileage under 80k with engine issues and worn out drivetrains becuase of the improper maintenance by their owners who drive them like rally trucks and barely check under the engine for even a simple oil topup. So when you are going to check cars just have a genuine conversation with the owner and you can easily understand if the owner genuinely cared for their car and took good care of it or if they are just swapping their leftover breadcrumbs.

If you are looking for a car that will give you more driving feel and handling id say lancer EX is the way.. but its very hard to find a good one (most of the ones that come on sale cheap are either with worn out interiors or with weird exterior mods, the original mileage ones with decent maintenance go for high prices) As for a more basic and reliable car id also stick to a corolla 141. The 1.6L is plenty for sri lankan roads and comfort wise the car sits well. the axio varient however is more expensive in the local market and usually you can find a newer and lower mileage 141 compared to an axio 141, besides most 141s were brought here on permits through TL so they are brand new when they were first registered. In terms of options the 141 comes with the rpm meter dash and the exact interior as the axio with manual AC and reading lights for front and back with cloth door trims. Axio in the other hand, most of the ones in the local market are X grade so it comes with the same options as the 141 except the speedo that is basic with no RPM or extra functions but every axio even the base model has all auto windows. This however changes in the Axio G (can find at 3.8-4mil) where it comes witth auto AC, Push start and the rpm dash with all auto windows, winker mirrors, Projector lights and whatnot... luxel is not a big upgrade from G). Besides the engine in the axio hasnt changed in a while as its the same engine in the newer axios and allions so parts wise its easy to find. The 1.5L on axio does a little better on fuel than the 1.6L 141 (at least in the newer 2013/14 model with same engine). Civic Fds most were japanese grey imports except for some non hybrid ones brought through stafford, Civics interior however no doubt wins with its fancy looking dash and comfy seats compared to lancers and corollas. imo, id side with a 141 axio, but if you fancy a little petrol head inside you, go for the lancer EX.

axela and civic is pretty good. you can get a ES5 facelift for that range. also try a 2005-9 lancer

Help..turbo Light Continuously On…camry Cv30 Diesel - Mechanical problems - AutoLanka