The vehicle is purring along. Tyres holding up, the Pirellis have done about 18K km.
The 85K servicing went smoothly, except for a shocker in the end. When I was about to drive off after paying the bill (things were working fine earlier, so didn't do a test drive before payment), I noticed that the centre differential lock light was on. The service adviser hadn't even noticed that. Neither had the person who bought the vehicle to the parking lot, after washing.
Some idiot had driven the vehicle in 4HL for a while. No idea why. And when. The service adviser said that it must have happened around the washing time.
A technician came and tried giving the usual fluff. "Saaar, nothing happens if the vehicle is driven in 4HL on tarmac". Gave them a blasting - they could have damaged the vehicle by driving in 4HL around the ASC. The light went away after some back and forth (try driving - very slowly - straight in 4H, the light will go away once the transmission wind-up is released; if not, try reversing slowly for a few feet, again in a straight line). I didn't know how they had driven the vehicle, so had to experiment with driving forward and backward - very slowly - before the transmission windup was released, and the light went off.
Learning: next time, I will tell the service advisor that no one should play around with the 4WD lever. I would have thought that one need not worry about such hygiene factors, but I increasingly realize that with a 4WD vehicle, one can't let one's guard down, even in Toyota ASCs.
Had gone for a 900 km roadtrip (Nilgiris, Anai Malai Hills) after that, no issues with the vehicle after the transmission windup incident, whether during high speed cruising, or offroading. Didn't try 4LL though - should have tried on some track, after what happened at the ASC.
Note: after any servicing, I always drive the vehicle in the city for 1-2 days before going on a roadtrip - helps in identifying issues due to ASC negligence. I had a bad incident many year back, during a family trip in my Indica. Immediately after servicing, I had taken off for the Nilgiris. The ASC hadn't fixed the coolant lid properly after replacing coolant ( I know, I should have checked everything before the trip, so it was my oversight too). After Gundlepet, the vehicle started overheating. Coolant had oozed out. Steam was coming out of the engine bay. We had to wait - under the burning midday sun on an April Sunday - till the engine cooled down a bit. Then poured water (there was a tubewell closeby) in the coolant chamber and slowly drove back to the nearest garage, 10 km away. We lost 3 hours, family suffered in the heat.
Had a minor adventure this time: I had reached Valparai around midnight. Not a single soul around. I missed the gate to Waterfalls estate, and went into some other tea estate track. After a while, I realized that the trail was getting narrower, steeper, and rockier. After driving 1 km, I figured that this couldn't be the road, since by then it had become track suitable only for 4WD vehicles. There was no place to turn. Kept going up, and finally found a suitable place. A 10 pointer turn, had to get down frequently and check with my torch how far away from edge (there was a 60 feet drop, the trail surface was full of rocks with loose clay) my wheels were, how much space I had etc.
As I keep saying, a 4x4 makes life a little more interesting - you can get away with a few things during such trips.
Next morning, I had nice sightings of the endangered Lion-tailed macaques, I had been wanting to take photos of them for quite some time.
Had become friends with the guys who were staying in the other room at the resort. Drove back with them till Tiruppur. They were in their new Scorpio. They had forest department contacts, so on the way back we entered a forest road (tarmac, but restricted access) after taking special permission. I parked my vehicle and went in their Scorpio (btw, the Scorpio's interiors felt far more upmarket than my Fortuner's). Had a couple of forest department guys with us. Got charged by an elephant. Saw forest fires. Came across a Sambar deer kill - we could smell the kill from the road, so was easy to find it.
During that weekend, I had an interesting spiritual (? jury still out on that) experience, but this is not the right forum for that
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