Re: My White Toyota Liva GD -- Initial ownership report My Toyota Liva completes 60,000 kilometres
I have not posted anything on this thread for more than the past two years. Now that my White Liva gets back from 60,000 kilometre routine servicing, I thought of posting something again just to convey that the car is fine and I am happy with my purchase four years ago. Liva is a car that suits our small family and during all these years it has not failed us in any way. This is a perfect low-maintenance car for us as it doesn't like to go the garage at all. This car has been driven mainly in city traffic and excepting two long drives to Mandarmoni and Shantiniketan, it has not done much highway driving. In city I have always got about 16-18 km to a litre of diesel. Which I think is fair enough. First thing first. About the 60K servicing.
A routine service as usual. Oil and filer changed, every other thing inspected. Wash and clean. Total bill: Rs 4272.00 including taxes. Car was driven to Topsel Toyota at 11.00 am. At 2.30 pm I got a call from the service engineer who informed that my car is ready. Went to collect the car at around 4.00 pm. Most usual thing. Only excitement was I had a hard look at the new Liva and Etios Platinum. This is not the place to write about them, so I would refrain from doing it. Only thing I would say that I am impressed with the cars. They look real premium now and have also been successful in avoiding anything flashy. A brief history of what happened in between
The 40K and 50K servicing of my car had also been normal and routine affairs. Till 40K, the car was under the Smile package. When I went for the 50K servicing I found that Toyota, for whatever reasons, has withdrawn their Smile scheme. Under Smile scheme there were discounts in servicing which are no longer there. Maybe, because of the low maintenance nature of Toyota cars, the Smile scheme was not not beneficial for Toyota. The customers have definitely lost out around 500 bucks on each servicing. When I went for the 50K servicing, I was pointed out that the front brake pads have thinned out. The rear pads were fine. The front brake pads were 2.2 mm then and they need replacement when they thin out to 1.5 mm. The service engineer didn't want to replace the brake pads but cautioned me that I should keep a watch on them and come to check at the service centre at 55K. I didn't like his idea of a visit to the service centre before 10K interval and asked him to replace the front brake pads. He did it, but reluctantly. At 50K service, the AC filter was also replaced. Later I checked the manual and found that they are supposed to replaced at every 30K km. Mine survived 20K kilometre more.
At around 58K running, I knew that the tyres needed replacement. I was thinking about this since the 50K service but was delaying just to make the most out the stock MRF tyres. Also, that the car runs only in city, so that was an advantage. At 58K there were still quite some threads visible on the tyres and they haven't gone bald. Yet I decided to change and replace them with Yokohama Earth. Costed 16,200/- for four tyres with some discount. The stepney retains the stock MRF. During the past four years I never had to use it. With Yokohama the road noise has definitely decreased. It runs much smoother than before. All these years, I have always done wheel alignment, balancing and rotating tyre position at 10K interval as per the advice of the manual. Maybe that's why the tyres lasted this long. I'll continue to do this with the new tyres too. Summary
At 60K, when I look back I am extremely happy with my decision to go for the Liva which was a new car at that time. Besides routine maintenance what I have spent so far are replacing two headlamp bulbs which got fused, the left rear light assembly which developed a crack and the cover of the right OVRM. Besides these, nothing ever happened to the car. Despite so much talk about cheap interior plastics, they have remained like new. No rattle whatsoever. TSK, in another thread, described this car as 'fill it, shut it, forget it' kind of a car. Yes, that's the peace of mind I enjoyed. What more do I want? Well, maybe the new Liva when I plan to change the car after another two years or so!
Last edited by subratasenn : 2nd October 2016 at 11:39.
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