The Altis is four years old now in my hands, but when I bought it, it was already 6 years old. That makes it 10 years old already!
Being a 10-year-old car, all sorts of problems are starting to creep in. As of last year, the car porch has already got patches of oils, indicating that it is leaking already. We were never got round to fixing it, simply because we were always cashless, or didn’t have the time for it. Now the time is right to finally send it to Toyota Puchong to get it done.
Why Toyota Puchong? Because that’s the nearest Toyota Service Centre that has the Early Bird service. We dropped the car on a Monday night and it was fixed by Friday evening. During the duration, Mei Fen has to drive me to the train station to and from work.
So how much did it cost? Close to a staggering RM3000! It’s painful yes, but it was worth it I guess. I can’t imagine sending it to an outside workshop. For RM3000, I get original Toyota parts, 1 year warranty, and workmanship from the people who knows a Toyota engine inside out. That alone is worth the extra I need to pay.
How does RM3000 look like? Well check it out yourself:
Here's how RM3000 look like
As you can see, some of the items are not directly related to the engine oil leakage, like exhaust ring, the coolant assembly and the transmission gear oil. But since the engine has already been taken out, it was wise to change the faulty parts. The biggest item is the tensioner and the water pump assembly, both costing more than RM500 each.
One can argue that you can do it cheaper outside. It might be true that you can do it for a lot lesser in other mechanics, but experience tells me that original is still best, even for a Proton.